Need fruit/grape crusher advice

[Maestro]

Hey gang. I'm about to purchase my first fruit press. I'm looking at a 14L press with the lead screw tilt out design with stainless steel basket. I like this one because I plan to do fruit wines as well as grape wines. It looks like it should do the both jobs for me just fine.

I can get the fruit crusher to go along with the press for a combo type setup so the question I have is... Can I use the hand crank style fruit crusher for grapes as well? Or am I better off looking for a standalone grape crusher/destemmer for when I make wine from the grapes? How important is a fruit grinder in other fruit wines that aren't from grapes?

This will be my first real foray into making wine from fresh fruit and grapes since I've worked with kits for the last several years. Any advice would be greatly appreciated here.

 

[salcoco]

if just crushing grapes you will have to hand pick out the stems in order to keep from having a very high tannin wine. this is not to bad for small amounts but can become tedious for large amounts. one plan is start small, once you start to either tire from picking out stems or are getting large batches , purchase a crusher /destemmer.
the fruit grinder is great for fruits, the crushed fruit can be pressed for the juices for follow on fermenting. the fruit wine is better when fermented from juice.

 

[JohnT]

I am a little confused here. The hand crank fruit crusher is actually a fruit grinder, correct?

If that is the case, you really do not want to use that for grapes. Grapes need to be simply crushed and in such a way that the skins are broken, but the seeds remain unaffected. A standard fruit crusher does not do this.

I would get at least a hand crank grape crusher and have the crushed grapes fall through a piece of chicken wire. This should allow the grapes to fall through while catching the grape stems. You want to remove grape stems as this contains types of undesirable tannins.