FAQ-Straining EquipmentQuestion: What is a hop ball? What can I do with it?
Answer:
The hop ball is a pretty cool little tool for any homebrewer. It has a few uses. You may use it to place your hops in during the boil, keeping all but the alpha acids from the hops inside the ball. Unlike using nylon bags for this purpose, the hop ball allows more of the hop flavor to come through for better utilization.
If have a couple of them on hand, you can also use one to place your additives in, such as orange peel and cardamom seed. This allows you to extract the flavor from these agents during the boil, and keep them out of the fermenter.
Another cool use for the hop ball is to place it inside a keg of beer. What happens is that the hop ball sinks to the bottom of the keg, which is right where the beverage out tube is at. Then all of the beer drawn off of the keg goes through the hops, giving your beer the freshest hop flavor and aroma....Click to Read full Answer
Question: I don’t want to invest in expensive equipment, is there anything cheaper to make a small batch of fruit wine?
Answer:
You’ve got some fruit lying around, but you’ve never tried to make wine before and you aren’t sure if making wine is for you. This is something that we hear all the time at Midwest, and there are some options that are very inexpensive to give fruit winemaking a try. Let us tell you now that there is no cheap way to go on the fermentation equipment. What we are talking about here is the crushing and pressing equipment that can be very expensive to buy. Don’t go cheap on the fermentation equipment as you will live to regret it.
Crushers
A crusher is a very handy item to have when making larger amounts of wine. They make life so much easier, but they are not at all necessary to make wine. If you have several people willing to roll up their sleeves, get dirty, and sweat a bit, then you can make your own crusher.
Presses
There really isn’t a cheap replacement for a press, but there is a way to squeeze the juice out of the fruit without having to invest in one. Take a nylon straining bag, or even a clean pillow case will work, fill the bag ½ way full with fruit, and wring out the bag like you would a wet towel.
Hint: Do not use a fruit juicer to extract the fruit. We’ve heard so many people burn up the motor that we’ve lost count. Feet good, fruit juicer bad....Click to Read full Answer
Straining Equipment
19 Item(s)
19 Item(s)
