For years now, Vinomaker and I have been using a home-made apparatus to separate the free-run juice from the pressed juice. Our DIY jobbie was made from food grade plastic and performed the task fairly well, but it was difficult to clean, and therein lies the problem. Anything, absolutely anything, that is used in the winemaking process from beginning to end has to be cleanable. There are a lot of ways to spoil wine and using dirty equipment is right at the top of the list. The most important thing to remember about microbial spoilage - from yeasts and bacterium - is that it is a whole lot easier to prevent the development of these microorganisms in the production of wine than it is to deal with the adverse effects of spoilage once it has happened.
Not exactly a cheap item, The Snorkel's retail price is $290. Vinomaker was considering another home-made gizmo, but when he did a little bit of research he found the cost of the materials alone would have been about $150. Much easier, and time management efficient, to just buy one that someone else manufactured. The Snorkel made the whole pressing operation, along with the fact that our hydraulic basket press was feeling better today, much more expeditious.
Harvest and winemaking 2015 is complete. Yay!
