The Best Juicer for Home Winemaking

When making wine at home you may find it more effective to use a juicer to crush and pulp your fruits rather than simply chopping, prior to adding the water. You have to be aware though that there are many “juicers” that won’t perform the job that a wine maker is hoping to perform. Sure, if you want to make a glass of fresh home made juice, they work perfectly. But if you’re looking for a device that will simply crush and pulp your fruit then the best juicer for winemaking is going to be a masticating juicer.

Crushing and Pulping with a Masticating Juicer

There are two different styles of these machines. The newest models are vertical masticating juicers, such as the Omega VRT350HD. The older style machines are horizontal masticating juicers, e.g. the Omega J8006. The good news for wine enthusiasts is that it’s the cheaper horizontal machines which will do a better job for you.

This is because the vertical units work as effective juice extractors. However, this isn’t what we want. Instead, the horizontal machines have a special homogenizing function which doesn’t extract the juice and separate it from the pulp but instead just crushes and grinds the pulp and juice together. As far as wine making goes, this is exactly what we want.

Full Flavored Fruit Wines

So if you’re wanting to make a tasty black raspberry wine. You could definitely just crush the berries in a nylon straining bag. That’s going to be the cheapest option. You may find you get better results if you run the berries through a horizontal masticating juicer using the “blank plate” which ensures no separation of pulp and juice. The fruits and juice is puréed. You can then put this into a nylon bag and you find that you get better results in terms of being able to set the color and extract the maximum amount of flavorful juice.

Instead of using a nylon bag, you could simply put all the pulped and crushed fruit (and juice) into the primary.

Taking the time to extract the full flavor and aroma of your chosen fruits is a worthwhile step if you hope to create the best wine possible, the right kind of juicer can definitely be of use. This is of course only the first step. You may feel that it’s overkill to spend over $200 on a juicer, but maybe not.