Does anybody use a juicer for their wines or meads?

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Focus

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Got a question for all you mad meaders and wine makers:

According to Jack Keller, the Uncle Charlie of wine, whenever using real fruit in wine or mead (or cyser to be precise, I guess) he always recommends something along the lines of heating water, adding cut-up fruit, and letting it steep / sit for about 24 hours before adding it along with dissolved sugar / honey to the primary.

I have a little juicer that works great for berries, carrots, just about anything you'd want to juice. The juice is a little pulpy, but that stuff should settle out in the must, I think. If I'm making a 1-gal batch of wine or mead, is there some reason that I wouldn't want to juice up my fruit (peaches, strawberries, apples, etc.) and add a pint or two to the honey and water mix?

The pulp my juicer produces is pretty juicy as well, so I could probably steap that for a while in the hot water to get some of the juicy goodness and strain it out when I add it to the primary.

Can anybody provide any insight / comment on this scheme?

Focus
 
... excuse my ignorance above, mead with fruit would be Melomel, not cyser (unless it was apple or cider).
 
A juicer would be fine - add the pulp back in for max favour. I use a food processor to blitz up fruit for 1 gallon batches.
 
How about using baby-food? It's pure and it comes mashed up about as finely as possible. Every time I feed my son, I wonder how his food would taste fermented.
 
Cheesefood said:
How about using baby-food? I wonder how his food would taste fermented.
I get some strange idea that before he was weaned you had the same thought. And somewhere is a 'secret carboy' of breast milk fermenting away.....
 
Cheesefood said:
How about using baby-food? It's pure and it comes mashed up about as finely as possible. Every time I feed my son, I wonder how his food would taste fermented.

That'd be a real expensive way of brewing hootch!

You need to post some new pics, how old is he now?
 
I used a juicer both last year and this year to make apple and pear wines. I think it works great. It takes a little more prep time, but--compared to using chunks of raw fruit, which will disintegrate and get VERY pulpy--you'll have to rack fewer times and the wine will clarify much quicker!
 

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