WineEasy Home Winemaking System

If you have been shying away from making wine from grapes because it seemed too messy or complicated, the folks at Blichmann Engineering — the same company that brought you other brewing and winemaking equipment, such as the conical fermentor — have developed the WineEasy^TM system that makes winemaking from grapes a piece of cake (no pun intended). Fermentation and pressing is all done in the SAME vessel without the need to transfer grape solids to a separate press, and the wine is transferred to a carboy under the action of a vacuum pump. It couldn't get any easier.

The system comes fully equipped with all the components shown in the figure on the left, except the carboy, although tanks are sold separately from the pump and racking kit, which can be used with any tank volume. All you need to supply are grapes, and you're on your way to making great wine the easy way.

The system includes a stainless steel fermentation tank, available in volumes of 20/30/55 gallons (76/114/209 liters), tank lid, piston assembly that acts as the pressing mechanism, tank stand, tank racking fittings (7/8"), ball valve and tri-clover clamps and a 1/2" barb fitting, 1/6-hp vacuum pump, plastic tubing for wine transfer to carboy, and miscellaneous parts for completing the vacuum racking system (stainless steel racking tube, check valve and tube, 2-hole bung, and piston bung).

The tank is designed with a false bottom and screen to allow wine to be racked free of seeds and other grape particles.

Operation is very simple. You can either crush grapes using your crusher and transfer the pomace and juice to the fermentation tank, or transfer a portion of whole-grape clusters to the tank and crush the grapes using, for example, a potato masher and then continuing adding and mashing grapes. Remove the stems, inoculate the must, place the lid on the tank, and proceed with fermentation as usual making sure to punch down the pomace daily. When fermentation is complete, wine is partly transferred by gravity to a carboy. The piston assembly and vacuum pump kit are then used to press the pomace and transfer the wine to a carboy. How easy is that! As a bonus, the vacuum pump can be used to degas the wine prior to bottling.

I have never quite been this excited about a new piece of winemaking equipment particularly that it has all the quality and precision attributes of German engineering. The manufacturer has not yet set a suggested retail price, but in my discussions with the president, the system will be very attractively priced.

Now I'm just waiting for harvest to test this system and make wine. Stay tuned for my full product review. In the meantime, you can get more info from Blichman Engineering's website or watch the promo video.