What about these grapes?

What about these grapes? | Ecency

Hello, everyone! 😎

A few days ago I had some time and picked some grapes in the backyard of my mother's house. It was the last time to do it, almost too late, because it had already started to dry.

There were not many, four crates. 10 kilos in all.
What to do with it now? Not enough to start making wine, I don't even know how to do that, and not enough to make jam (I don't know how to do that either 😁).

Well, I'll squeeze the grapes into juice. I have some experience in this, not with grapes but with apples. I even published something - two years ago - Preparation of apple juce.
Last year was not a great harvest, so we didn't make any juice, and this year is no different.

Coming back to grapes, I borrowed a hand-held fruit grinder from a friend, which can also be used for grapes, and bought one small 20-liter press. We have a larger 120-liter one at home and an electric crusher, but for a few kilos of grapes and apples, I preferred not to use that because it's too much preparation.

So I washed the press and the grinder first.

Then I set up a place in the garage for the mill and the pressing. I put thin plastic sheeting on the floor below because I knew that, even though there was a little bit of everything, it will be a lot of mess.

I was going to just press the grapes, but a friend advised me that it's necessary to grind grapes first because then you get more juice. Ok.

Let's go into action.

The grapes go into the crusher. I turn the big wheel from my right, it goes very quickly and there is no effort.
The crushed grapes fall into the bowl below. When the bowl under the mill is full, I transfer it and put the contents into the press.

Before pressing the grapes, a plastic mesh must be placed in the press to prevent everything from slipping out during the pressing.
Well, there were grapes for half the press and while I was loading the press, the liquid - the juice - was already flowing out.

I'm done with grapes.
Question: how much grape juice did I squeeze? Exactly four liters.
If I had more, I would have overcooked it, but it didn't make sense for four liters. We drank it in two days, haha.

Since there were no more grapes and I still had time, I decided to press apples.
There are about 100 kilos of apples, but as I have a small press I will try to press just a couple of crates of apples today. I am interested to see how much juice there will be because apples are a completely different fruit.

The apples are old varieties, they are completely natural, I would say organic, no chemical pest control agents have been used on them, so they rot very quickly and after washing, each one must be looked at and the rotten apples must be removed or pruned.

Grinding apples, by hand, is a completely different story from grinding grapes. It was not quick and it was not easy.

It goes for a while, then it stops, you have to move some apples, then you start spinning again, and after a few minutes it gets harder and harder, your hand starts to hurt, and then you stop again... in short, I regretted not having set up the big electric fruit mill. But then I could have done with some more help and another hour of cleaning, so I just stuck with it.

Finally, the bowl was full and I filled the press with crushed apples.

I filled it to the top, 2 crates of crushed apples, and started squeezing and squeezing...
I squeezed about four liters of apple juice out of two presses. The juice was, in fact still is, as I write this I drink it, very sweet, but there is a little juice.

I was expecting to get more juice, but I guess, because of the drought, the apples are not juicy either... but there are still some, and after we drink this juice, I'll probably squeeze some more for the weekend...

What did I learn from this story?
For small quantities of fruit, this press is perfectly suitable, but for larger quantities, like a couple of years ago when we had more than two tonnes of apples in the garden, you have to work with an electric crusher and a bigger press, because everything is faster and easier.

And one last photo. What is in the picture?