E.C. Kraus Home Wine and Beer Making Supplies

There are many pieces of homemade wine equipment than can be described in just one post.  It’s important to understand each piece of homemade wine equipment, how it functions, and whether or not a particular piece of equipment is needed in your own home winemaking practice.  Today’s post features three more important pieces of equipment: the Three Spout Bottle Filler, the Wine Thief, and the Brew...

There are so many more pieces of homemade wine equipment than can be described in one post.  It’s important to understand each piece of homemade wine equipment, how it functions, and whether or not a particular piece of equipment is needed in your home winemaking practice.  Today, you’ll be introduced to three important pieces of equipment: the Copper Tun Heating Pad, the Transfer Pump, and the...

Hello-   I've never made wine; but, I'm slowly acquiring the wine making materials. I would like to make fruit wines mostly plum and perhaps strawberry and peach.   From what I've been reading it seems that either one starts with juice and does the whole fermentation process that way or that one ferments the chopped up raw fruit contained in a bag for a week or so and then continues the...

Hello Kraus, I made 5 gallons of grape juice by using a steam juicer. In this process the stems were still attached to the grapes. Do I need to do anything special from the normal wine making process? I was told the stems contain pectin and may require additives. Thank you, Henry---------- Hello Henry,   I believe what your friend was referring to is the tannin that is in the stems of the grapes....

Hello EC Kraus,I was wondering what the difference was between muscadine and scuppernong grapes? I hear people talk about both as if they were the same thing. Are they? Or are they different? Thanks Justin S.,---------- Hello Justin, Muscadine/Scuppernong grapes are indigenous to the Southeast region of the U.S. They grow both wild and domestically in backyards and on farms from Arkansas to The...

Hello: I have almost 4 gallons of Scuppernong grape juice that I've gotten with my steam juicer this year. I would like to know how to make white wine with it. I was needing to know how much water to add to it. I would like to know what other wine making materials/ingredients I will need. I already have equipment. Can you help me with this. Thanks Fred ---------- Dear Fred,With actual wine grapes...

Hello, I made elderberry wine with elderberries I put in the freezer last year. I made juice out of them by cooking them in my steam juicer and followed your wine recipe on the website. I want to bottle the wine but do not have a corker. Do you have suggestions on how to stopper a wine bottle with out a corker? Thank you for your help. Becky ---------- Dear Becky, You are correct in assuming that...

If you're the kind of home wine maker that always seems to have fresh fruit coming your way, one piece of homemade wine equipment you should have on hand is a steam juicer. It works beautifully for extracting juices from a huge variety of different fruits, so no matter what type of fruit ends up falling your way, the steam juicer will be able to help you to turn it into wine.A steam juicer works...

One of the features that makes the our Steam Juicer so convenient to use is its glass lid. Having a lid you can see though allows you to see the produce being steamed without interrupting the progress. With other Steam Juicers you have to lift the lid to see what's going on, and there goes all you steam rolling out into the kitchen.The lid is made of heavy-tempered glass, so breakage is...

Hello, I was wondering if you could help me out. My plums are about ripe and i would like to use a steam juicer on them. I need to know if the one you show on your website is made of stainless-steel or is it an aluminum? Gladys M. --------- Dear Gladys, The steam juicer we offer is made of heavy-guage, 18/10 stainless steel with the exception of the lid which is made of both stainless steel and...

Making wine from juice collected by a steam juicer is no different than making wine from the fruit itself. You can use the same wine recipes, the same proportions of wine yeast, sugar, water and other wine making ingredients. The only true difference is that when you use the steam juicer to collect the juice from the fruit, you'll have no pulp to deal with during the fermentation process, only...

One of the impressions that many people have about the steam juicer is that it is slow. I know, because I was one of them. Then I had the pleasant opportunity of actually working with one at great length over at a friend's house recently, and here's what I learned.One of the reasons the steam juicer 'seems' so slow is that you need to bring the water in the base water pan to a slow boil before any...

When using a steam juicer to extract the juice from grapes, how do you know when it's done? In other words, how can you tell when the juicer has done all it can do? This is the question that was posed to us earlier today by one of our customers in Urbana, Illinois. They are going to make to make some homemade grape wine from Catawbas this year. What a great question! The steam juicer we offer has...

Here's a great tip from one or our customers, Dave in Anacoco, Louisiana. He uses a steam juicer as a way to get as much juice out of the fruit as possible. He also uses it as as a way to gather together the pulp for the fermentation. Dave makes homemade grape wine from scuppernong grapes he grows himself. He says he puts the grapes in his steam juicer to extract the juice. Once the juice as been...

One of the tools you may find in a winemaker's arsenal is the steam juicer. A steam juicer allows the home winemaker to easily extract juice from various fruits with little effort. The steam juicer also eliminates the need for a grape crusher or dealing with grape presses. This makes it very economical as well.Some may be wondering, "what exactly is a steam juicer?" It can be best described as a...