How Does A Steam Juicer Work?

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Steam Juice For Making WineIf 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 by bursting the fruit with steam and then collecting the fruit’s juice as it freely drains from the pulp.
As you can see in the diagram on the right, the fruit is put into a perforated pan with a lid. This pan then sits on top of a collector pan. All this sits over a pan of boiling water which is being heated by your stove.
As the water boils, steam rises through the opening of the collector pan to the fruit. As the fruit breaks down from the steam, it releases the juice from the pulp. The juice then falls through the perforated holes into the collector pan.
From there you can drain the juice into canning jars for later use, or you can drain it directly into your fermenter so you can start making your next batch of wine.
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

0 thoughts on “How Does A Steam Juicer Work?”

  1. when i use a steam extractor myself i always leave the pipe open running into a demijohn i was wondering if this may reduce efficiency by not letting the steam build up so much pressure if this procces needs pressure could you shed some light on this matter

  2. The is no advantage in letting the steam juicer build up juice or pressure. You a doing fine by leaving the steam juicer’s hose open and running through the entire process.

  4. James, technically you can use it to distill water, but it would not be as fast as the water distillers you by at Sears and such. Unless you need a Steam Juicer anyway, I would not recommend it for that purpose.

  5. Is there any difference in quality or taste between juice that is pressed and juice obtained through a steamer? I have never seen this done and would like to know if the wine taste would be effected.

  6. David, for the most part there is no difference. One thing you may notice is that the resulting wine will be a little more crisp and quenching, and lighter in color. When pressing grapes you get a little more color and body.