Adventures in Grape-Squishing

Hey, remember last time, when I mentioned that we'd been grape-squishing? Well, now I'm going to tell you guys all about it.

It all started a few Fridays ago, when my in-laws went to a pick-your-own-vineyard and came home with 165 lbs. of grapes. Yes, 1-6-5. That's... a lot of grapes. So what were we to do with all of those grapes? Make wine, of course.
My in-laws have been making wine longer than I've been a part of the family (which, admittedly isn't that long, but still, it's traditional at this point). Every fall they acquire grapes, squish the juice out, and let it ferment into something alcoholic and delicious.

For the last several years, this squishing has taken place in their basement. The set-up was... precarious at best. There was a car-jack involved, and a cross-beam named Roderick that butted up against the ceiling... and yeah, it wasn't good.
So last year, my husband and I built them a wine-press. A real wine-press. Based off of the design of a commercial wine-press that a friend of theirs had purchased for lots of $$.

okay... so we're still using a car-jack.

The basic design is simple. There's a wooden frame that supports a car-jack, that holds the actual press. Inside the big green bucket is another (Home Depot) bucket with lots of holes drilled into it. Grapes go in the inside bucket, pressure is applied and juice comes out the bottom. The big green bucket has a spigot installed in the side so that the juice can be moved to yet another bucket. You can't make wine without a lot of buckets, apparently.

Okay, so once you've got your press all set up, you add grapes. 165 lbs. of them if you've got!

All the classiest vintners use kitchen pots.

Then, like I said, it's time to squeeze. We made a set of inter-locking pegs that would fit between the car-jack and the grapes so that we could continue to add pressure even as the grapes got squished down. Once your pegs are in place, you squeeze.

Here you can see our peg system in action.

I wanted to cut dovetails on the pegs but... meh, you can't always get what you want. What comes next? Well, uh, more squeezing. And then? Even more squeezing. If you've got a lot of grapes (and we do), you're going to have to do a lot of squeezing. We did about 2 batches of white grapes, and another 2-3 batches of red grapes. If you've got a spigot installed into the side of your big green bucket (which I highly recommend), your grape-juice can pour right out into its permanent home. In our case, some fancy food-grade buckets which will house the grape-juice while it ferments.

Happy little grape-juice

All there is left to do is ferment your grape-juice and make it into delicious delicious wine. But that, boys and girls, is another show.

What do you do with the left-over grape mash? It composts really really well, so go ahead and dump it into your compost heap... if that is, you don't mind a massive fruit-fly infestation. If you're not a fan of fruit flies, then you're probably going to want to throw the mash out. Sorry.
And speaking of flying pests, if you're squishing grapes outside over the summer (or even in the early fall), be prepared to entertain some of these guys:

Yes, that's a yellow-jacket, and yes, there were a lot of them.

I think that about wraps things up for today. We had a lot of fun grape-squishing, and in about a year (give or take a few months) we'll have some wine! Hey, I never said this was a quick process. Alright, stay tuned next time for our October installment of Librarian's Corner. What am I going to be reading/reviewing this month? Who knows! I sure don't! So come back on the 21st and find out!

Happy Squishing!

Project Sunday 3-16-14

Happy Monday, and Happy St. Patrick's Day to all those who celebrate! And to all those who don't, wear something green anyway, it's not worth getting pinched by strangers.

Here's a quick re-cap of yesterday's Project Sunday activities for you to enjoy:

Yesterday we celebrated the Jewish holiday of Purim. My husband and I went to morning services to hear the reading of the Megillah (the Book of Esther, which tells the story of how the evil Haman wanted to destroy the Jews because a man named Mordechi refused to bow down to him, and how Esther the Queen managed to save her people), and to stuff our faces with delicious food-stuffs.

No, I didn't make these, but don't they look delicious?





Then is was off to a Sudah (Purim party) at my in-law's house, where we stuffed our faces some more with more delicious food-stuffs.
Then it was time to get to work on my father in law's wine press. This is a project that we started working on more than a few months ago, and have been making spotty progress on ever since. It's sort of a slow going project, because we have to be at my in-law's house, and have everyone involved in the mood to work on a project, which doesn't always happen.

Anyway, we finished up the last step of the wine press, and I'm happy to report that it is now in working condition. There are more improvements that we could make, little additions that might improve its performance, but we wanted to hold off until we see how the wine press actually works. And since my in-law's won't be getting their hands on the right grapes until at least September, we might be waiting awhile. Oh well, at least that's another project done! I'd love to write about the press and its construction at some point, so keep an eye out for that.

After that, my exhausted husband and I came home and crashed. We just had no energy to work on our own projects (and it was just too cold outside for the painting we were planning on doing), so we decided to chill out and play video games for a bit.

I got some work done on a personal writing project, but other than that, we had a rather un-productive evening, and I'm okay with that.
Sure, Project Sunday is for working on projects, but we did, and we celebrated one of my favorite holidays on top of it all.

So was this the most productive Project Sunday we've had? No. Was it a fun and relaxing one? YES!

Don't worry, we'll have another Project Sunday coming up next week, so stay tuned!



And I'd love to hear what you guys are working on for your Project Sundays, so let me know in the comments!