After the Niagara harvest we sorted the grapes and weighed them. Having almost 13 pounds we had to decide to make jelly or wine. We decided to make a very small batch of wine from the juice. Since we didn’t have a press we were uncertain of how many liters of juice we could press. To get the juice we went with the old-world technology of stomping the grapes. Since Kathy is lighter, she was drafted to do the gentle stomping.
Her first comment was that the grapes were cold. They were picked early morning before sunshine illuminated the vines. Kathy then began to stomp the grapes. Although there looked like a lot of juice, it didn’t amount to as much as we hoped for. The pulp and juice were put in cheesecloth and strained. After the day we collected about 2.8 liters of juice.
I added some peptic enzyme to the juice to prevent peptic haze during fermentation. Next year I’ll add it to the crushed grapes since it will also increase juice extraction. Also added to the juice was potassium metabisulfite This too was added to the jucice before adding the yeast. I’ll research the possibility of adding it to the crushed grapes before straining the juice next year.
Cheers,
Terry
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