Stopping fermentation 214Joe - If you have your sweetened wine stabilized, and by that I mean proper pH, sulfite and sufficient K...
If you wanted to use a hydraulic jack, it'd be rather easy to set it up so that it can't leak(not that I think tha'ts a rela concern, any decent, new bottle jack probably shouldn't be leaking) into the juice. I'd use a metal plate(nothing special, 1-16" al-zinc-steel, just to give a base to seal too) between jack and what it's pressing on(Be that steel, plywood, whatever), then use some rtv silicone, or better yet, some bondo-glbutt(bear in mind, this comes nowhere near the actual fruit), make a slightly bowl shaped sealed surface around-encasing the jack.
Just an idea off top of my head, lots of solutions, but if you did want to use a bottle jack, no reason no to do it. Know guys who've made pin "peening" presses for knifemaking with bottle jacks, and some of them are working with things like presentation grade ironwood, etc, that would put you out a lot more money than most small-medium size batches of grapes if the wood was contaminated, and they have no worries about it.
Sadly, not a setup I ever got around to making myself, and taking a break from knifemaking.
Joel
