Much like Alton Brown on the Food Network TV, he preaches one universal kitchen tool versus one tool for each task, unless needed. We only have so much room in a kitchen, and a limited amount of money for spending on kitchen tools.
Struggling to easily and quickly learn everything about cider/wine making within one day, I found multiple instructions for crushing & pressing grapes. In other words, the initial crushing of the grapes and then repeated/redundant pressing down of the floating grape skins during fermentation. All articles read seemed to dictate having to buy and use additional equipment for keeping the grape skins pressed down! Dear God, another tool I have to buy and rush shipping!
During my initial crushing & pressing, I decided to use a food processor for pureeing the grapes. Due to my own excellence, with possibly a very slight influence of God's will, I avoided much of the hassles with the repeated pressings by simply using a food processor!
I also decided to dump the fresh pureed grape into carboys instead of plastic five gallon buckets, as I haven't read and researched far enough in advance and dealing with the conflicting advice between store bought concentrate , wine kits and fresh grapes.
Funny, with everything pureed/pulverized and fermenting within carboys, I merrily simply swirl the jugs every now and then the puree magically becomes soluble/mixed again! No further risk of contamination of repeatedly pressing the bag of skins down into the liquid or inserting some customized stirring stick into the must! Possible the floating skins may dry out a lot less easily.
Some things to be cautious about:
1) Using a blender or food processor creates a small amount of heat, likely a moat concern and possibly desireable.
2) Clean the blender or food processor with potassium metabisulfite, or other sanitizer.
3) The blender or food processor has a lot more hidden pockets for hiding contaminates.
Any other suggestions?
Struggling to easily and quickly learn everything about cider/wine making within one day, I found multiple instructions for crushing & pressing grapes. In other words, the initial crushing of the grapes and then repeated/redundant pressing down of the floating grape skins during fermentation. All articles read seemed to dictate having to buy and use additional equipment for keeping the grape skins pressed down! Dear God, another tool I have to buy and rush shipping!
During my initial crushing & pressing, I decided to use a food processor for pureeing the grapes. Due to my own excellence, with possibly a very slight influence of God's will, I avoided much of the hassles with the repeated pressings by simply using a food processor!
I also decided to dump the fresh pureed grape into carboys instead of plastic five gallon buckets, as I haven't read and researched far enough in advance and dealing with the conflicting advice between store bought concentrate , wine kits and fresh grapes.
Funny, with everything pureed/pulverized and fermenting within carboys, I merrily simply swirl the jugs every now and then the puree magically becomes soluble/mixed again! No further risk of contamination of repeatedly pressing the bag of skins down into the liquid or inserting some customized stirring stick into the must! Possible the floating skins may dry out a lot less easily.
Some things to be cautious about:
1) Using a blender or food processor creates a small amount of heat, likely a moat concern and possibly desireable.
2) Clean the blender or food processor with potassium metabisulfite, or other sanitizer.
3) The blender or food processor has a lot more hidden pockets for hiding contaminates.
Any other suggestions?