Cherry Mead Recipe: Pressed
Jul 26th, 2007 by Erroll
I didn’t intend to leave the cherry mead on the skins for three weeks, but there are other wines to fuss over, meadmaking questions to ponder, and even unfermentable things that a winemaker must attend to. Yesterday I poured the mead, skins, pits, pulp and all, into my homemade 3-bucket press. A bucket drilled with holes, making it look like an oversized colander, holds the fruit. It fits inside another bucket which catches the wine and drains it through a spigot and tubing into a 5-gallon carboy. A third bucket, filled with water, fits into the one holding the fruit and squeezes out the wine. Not the most efficient press, but you can’t beat the price!
I love the simplicity of your press. I have made fruit meads in the past but was not able to press the fruit, so I know that some flavor was lost.
I recently made a mulberry mead and tried something similar with a metal bowl and colander. It worked quite well.
I think your bucket in a bucket press will allow me to press more at once. I already have a two of the buckets and one has a spigot. I just need a 3rd with holes in the bottom.
Thanks for the idea!
Glad I could help. One thing to keep in mind with this press is that the common 5-gallon plastic buckets fit together with a gap. That means you can have too little fruit in the press and it won’t apply any pressure. In cases like that you’ll need to add spacers, like blocks of wood or bricks.