The harvest...from what could be reached from the ground and the deck. Fifteen pounds (almost 7 kilos).
08-07-04 12:58p 1013.6KB
Processing 3.5 kilos per batch.
08-07-04 9:28p 726KB
The juice extractor. There are three sections. The bottom (boiler) is heavy steel and holds about 3 liters of water. The second section has a truncated conical nozzle with perforations at the tip. The tip extends into a center cone of the third section. The third section is a basket that holds the fruit. The steam from the boiler is forced into the third section via the cone, passes through the fruit, and out through a nozzel in the section section. A rubber hose guides the steam and extracted juice to a catch basin (the green pitcher in the photo).
08-07-04 9:29p 764.6KB
About 15 minutes later and the grape juice is pouring steadily out of the nozzel. The tip of the hose has a stainless steel tube insert. That allows the clamp to stay on the hoze yet not pinch. Recall, the outpouring is a mix of grape juice and steam. It is much safer to pinch the clamp and slide it up a centimeter to close the stream than it is to try and put the clamp on.
08-07-04 9:45p 684.7KB
All finished with both batches. Yield was about 5 liters of juice. Since the extraction was by steam, it is likely the juice has a substantial water content. Notice the remains in the red bowl. Except for the stems which we removed prior to steaming (not required, but we wanted to limit the extraction of tannic acid) this is all that remains of the harvested grapes. The mass was surprisingly solid, only about ¼ liter of liquid remained.
08-07-04 10:48p 733.3KB