Cold pressed juice vs steeping fruit

[luis.salas]

Hi, everyone.

I’m new in winemaking so I was reading a lot but I never got to answer this question: steeping or pressing?

I’m planning to work with other fruits, not grapes. Why almost every recipe you can find steeps the fruit in water with sugar instead of pressing it and getting the juice? This sounds better for me, since it’s the way you do grape wine and cider. The other way sounds like water with fruit flavor.

What do you think? Is there something that I’m missing in the wine making science?

Thanks!

 

[scbison]

I think that most recipe's you are seeing originate from hobby winemakers that are not setup to press fruit. If you can press fresh fruit go for it!

 

[luis.salas]

I think that most recipe's you are seeing originate from hobby winemakers that are not setup to press fruit. If you can press fresh fruit go for it!

Thanks!

 

[bernardsmith]

I think that there may be another reason - after all, even home wine makers who make wine from grapes can crush and press their fruit using home made tools and they don't add water. But the thing is that I suspect that the original recipes (some going back a few centuries) treated country wines as being less about the intensity of the flavor.

Here's the thing: to get about 1 gallon of juice from fresh grapes you need something like 12-`16 lbs of fruit. To get 5 gallons you need at least 60 lbs. Sixty pounds. What would 60 lbs of strawberries cost and how much juice could you extract from 60 lbs? (25 kilo, approx). So there is the cost of making a wine from 100 percent fruit... but then the fruit is likely to have only half the amount of sugar that wine grapes have so even after buying your 60 lbs or more of berries or stone fruit you are still going to have to add pounds and pounds of sugar to raise the gravity close to 1.090. The juiced fruit may have only a gravity of about 1.050

Outside of the cost you have the intensity of flavor. Many home wine makers are not looking for anything like the intensity of the flavor one looks for in a red grape wine. Country wines are not chugged like a beer but they are not savored like a wine either. Folk are looking for flavor but not intense flavor and with all due respect to mangoes or peaches or plums or raspberries they really do not have the complexity of flavor of a Chianti or a Sangiovese or a Pinot Noir. They are after all , grown and eaten for the table.

 

[Mallerstang]

I think that most recipe's you are seeing originate from hobby winemakers that are not setup to press fruit. If you can press fresh fruit go for it!

True - I make fruit wine, and have not yet gotten around to making a fruit press.

Not sure about "steeping" though - that makes it sound like the fruit is just dipped in and taken out. When I remove the mesh bag of fruit, after several days fermenting in the primary, I squeeze out as much juice as possible. Depending on the fruit, only about 20-30% of the original weight remains as pulp, because several days in the primary with water, pectic enzyme and yeast breaks down the fruit and releases the juice.

Also, having the skins and seeds in the must for several days of primary fermentation adds flavour and sometimes tannin.

It's not grape/"proper" wine of course, and the recipes involve water and sugar - but it's usually delicious and costs about $2 per bottle.

 

[bernardsmith]

I agree. I made my first batch of wine this fall from lugs of fresh grapes and after simply crushing (not pressing, crushing, where you break the skins and allow the yeast access to the insides of the grapes, the grapes were left in the fermenter for about two weeks, not four days, and they were left with skins and seeds AND the amount of juice that was expelled BEFORE pressing was actually very little. I pressed by hand without a mechanical press and I was able to extract about 3 gallons without any problem and probably could have doubled that volume with a grape press. I was able to produce a second run from the same grapes and so obtained a total of 6 gallons which I am aging separately. But my point is that we make grape wine a little differently from the way we make country wines.