Building a fruit and wine press

[oldfella]

I am building a wine press at the moment and have a couple of questions, so I need a some advice.

I live in an area where the water contains a lot of calcium, and I wonder if this will affect the wine, or whether I should continue to use bottled water.

If I use an aluminum saucepan to press the fruit in, will this affect the fruit, or must I use stainless steel. Got the the Alli pot and as it is made from 3mm thick material it would stand up to the pressure of a 5 ton bottle jack.




Any advice would be welcomed.

[MKG]

The water used to make wine certainly affects the wine - but not necessarily in a bad way. It could even improve it. That's a suck it and see, then. Your aluminium pan will be OK provided ...

a) the fruit juice doesn't stay in there for days.

b) you wash the pan gently (ie don't scour it). Aluminium develops an oxide coating which prevents acidic reactions. If you scour it away all the time, you'll always get an acidic reaction.

Hope that helps.

Mike

[Minnesota]

If you deside that your water is too high in calcium.
there is a simple trick to get most of it out.

bring the water to a boil, cut heat and let it cool UNDISTURBED !
you will see most of the calcium will settle to the bottom of the pan.
then just syphon off the water leaving the calcium sediment behind.

MKG is surely right about the aluminum pan.

[oldfella]

Thanks lads, but was talking to a friend about it, and an hour later he returned with a machine that chops and juices a 1lb of apples in about half a minute, so I will try that first and see if it will handle all the fruits and berries, I can't see why it shouldn't, but once again Thanks,
Eddy