The homebuilt winery

Whether you have a cellar stocked with homemade vintages or are a recent convert to the rewards of home winemaking, you are likely to need some new equipment. The Homebuilt Winery provides complete building plans for 43 winemaking projects, pieces that facilitate the entire process of turning grapes into wine - from crushing and destemming to bottling and labeling. Each project includes thorough step-by-step instructions, building diagrams, an illustration of the completed piece, and instructions for use. A home winemaker and experienced builder himself, Steve Hughes understands every step in the winemaking process and has designed projects that are useful and durable, yet easy to build with only basic carpentry skills and materials. Using his building plans, you can do anything from replacing a few worn pieces to building an entire home winery.--COVER.

Includes index.

The home winery: an overview -- Grape & fruit processing. Crusher -- Manual destemmer -- Foldable, rollable wine press -- Punch-down tool -- Fermentation cooler -- Fermentation chamber -- Moving wine. Winery dolly -- Racking canes & hoses -- Siphon pump -- Vacuum pumping setup -- Wine hoist -- Barrel dolly -- Container management. Barrel Room -- Diamond wine bottle rack -- Silicone bungs -- The home wine laboratory. Hydrometer -- Lab support stand -- Malic acid test -- Chromatography chamber -- Free SO, testing setup -- Gram scale -- Sparkling wine. Riddling rack -- Disgorging freezer -- Disgorging key -- Disgorging receptacle -- Filtering, bottling and labeling Bottle tree -- Wine filter -- Rinser-sparger -- Four-spout bottle filler -- Label alignment jig -- Your wine cellar. Drawing cellar plans -- Ladder racking jig -- Ladder racking -- Curved corner racking -- Waterfall racking -- End cap shelves -- Diamond bins -- Building the backyard vineyard. Cutting propagation bed -- Vineyard trellis -- Barrel fun. The "Winedirondack" chair -- Decorative barrel stand -- Winery stool -- Making your own toasted oak.