The eating grapes at Ross House, which Alex pruned radically in the winter, produced massive amounts of beautiful grape clusters this year. They were going bad, so I asked Alex to pick them and bring them home. We decided to try out the Hydropress and juice them.
It took all afternoon to process two batches of grapes, about 50 kg worth. It was definitely an improvement over hand mashing or using the apple press. It's so easy and there's no electricity involved. There is a bladder that inflates with water pressure at between 2.5 and 2.9 psi. You insert a mesh bag, place your grapes inside, evenly spaced around the bladder, close it up, leave the top pressure valve just barely open, and start the water to fill the bladder. When it fills up, a bit of liquid eases out of the pressure valve. You then shut the valve tight and continue the water pressure, until all the juice is expressed, keeping it below 3 psi.
We noticed a couple of things. When whole grapes exploded, they squirted out through the holes rather than just dripping down the sides. When we destem and crush first, that shouldn't happen. (We ordered the rest of the equipment today.) We also noticed that many of the grapes were not juiced because the stems may have prevented them from being crushed. Also, the 35l Hydropress does not tilt, so cleaning it is a bit dodgy. We maybe should have gone for a bigger size. It's also rather difficult to clean the grape flesh off the mesh bag.
So we got about 20l of juice from the 50 kg of grapes -- 17 750ml bottles plus 2 litre bottles and a 2-litre bottle. We made a bit of a mess but clean up is fairly easy. We do, however, need clean room boots which are already on order, aprons and a couple of tables to work on. As we try things out, we'll learn what's working and what needs modification.
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