Small Fruit Press

One of my favorite pieces of home wine-making equipment is a small sturdy plastic and metal fruit press that I picked up many years ago. It is good for small amounts of crushed soft fruits and berries just right for my 5 Gal. recipes that usually contain 15-20 lbs of fruit. The entire press is designed to be suspended inside of a plastic bucket to catch the juice. I use a fine mesh nylon pressing bag to hold the pulp and this gives me a very good yield of juice, flavor, and color.

 

I place the press in the bucket and the pressing bag inside the press and ladle the must into the press until full then fold over the bag and replace the pressing plate and and add the cross-bar and screw and suspend the press on the top of the bucket.

The pressing itself is quite slow and the screw is turned in stages with rest periods as the juice is extracted. I may open the press and loosen the pulp with a spoon to free more juice.

I am not able to find this fruit press available anymore. If you do find a source for this press, or a similar small press, please share it in the comments so others may get one if interested.

I have found a small fruit press that would work for 5 gallon recipes with 15-20 lbs of fruit that could be used in your kitchen without a large mess. You can find one on Amazon here.

I would recommend always using a fine nylon mesh pressing bag and placing the press inside of a large bucket with s drain spigot to catch the juice and have a hose from the spigot to your carboy. Many basket style fruit presses will pop and squirt the juice as it is pressed and can create quite a mess around the press if used in the traditional way.  I would not recommend such a small press for harder fruits such as apples or pears.

All fruits and berries need to be crushed first and most are fermented on the pulp for a week or so before pressing.

 For crushing soft fruit and berries I use a giant restaurant potato masher with a 24 inch handle. You can find this model on Amazon here. This is much easier than stomping berries with your feet - Ha! It is recommended that you freeze your fruit first and then thaw which will help to soften the fruit before crushing. I usually freeze my fruit anyway as I harvest until I have enough to make wine. When making rhubarb wine you can just cut the stalks into half-inch pieces - but lately I use my food processor to puree the rhubarb into a pulp. It can take a while to do 15 lbs but not as tiring as chopping by hand.