Speidel Hydro Wine Press 90L

Speidel Hydro Wine Press 90L. I used an old school wine press for many years with my father. During the summer we had some parts go missing from the old reliable wooden press. So I decided to check out the “new age” wine making equipment. I had already stepped up my game by upgrading my fathers old manual grape crusher to motorized grape destemmer so I thought their must be an upgrade to the grape squeezing process. Well do not look no further! This Speidel press is everything you would expect from German design. The press has a rubber balloon in the middle of the basket.
The press uses water to fill the rubber bladder. A friend of mine had some thoughts that the water pressure coming from my house might not be strong enough to inflate the bladder so he thought why not use air pressure. I had seen some larger wine presses using air pressure but when I had asked the company why this press was a water filled bladder rather than air filled, they told me filling with air pressure was too dangerous and happens too quick.
Well after giving it some thought we decided to go against that. We hooked an air compressor that we SET TO 3atm. 3atm is the pressure setting on the blow off valve on the unit. By setting your air compressor to the same setting you are guaranteeing that you won’t fill your bladder with an excess amount of air that could damage your press. Yes even though the press has a blow off valve we still wanted to be extra cautious.
Once we opened the valve on the press we immediately do the juices flowing. Their are a few important things to remember when pressing with air.
1. Keep an eye on your gauge
2. Open the valve just enough to hear air filling the bladder. After about a minute you will start to see juices flowing.
3. When I mean open the valve a crack I mean a tiny bit. Bladder presses do tend to give you more yield but you need to go smooth and slow.
4. My press filled to 90L took about 15-20min to press.
5. Because it went by so much faster I pressed my must one more time at the end. I gained an extra 3gl. Not a large amount but it only took another 20min.
6. The nice part of using Air pressure is not having to deal with hoses and water leaking. The normal setup would require a water supply hose and a hose for the drainage of the bladder. With the air pressure all you need is you air line. Once you open the drain valve the air shoots out within a few seconds.
So to sum up this press is the real deal.