Help, New fruit wine maker

[aabigrick]

hello all, we got a wine making kit and seeing as we have never made wine before we sure could use some help.

I want to start off with strawberry wine, maybe a blueberry wine.
Also I could get blueberry cider to use.

My question to begin is, what specific way is best to crush fruit and strain it too get the juice out, if i dont have a commerical type press? Does it matter as long as I strain it good? The beginners wine making book that came with the kit has a few recipes but very very limited instructions.

All of the recipes call for crushing the solid fruit except for the reciple. Could I use just juice instead of fresh fruit for my first batch? If so what conversion would I use for using juice vs. pounds of fruit. More specifically the recipe for strawberry wine calls for 3.5 poundcs of fruit to make a gallon and then add water to the juice until one gallon is mixed, but for example 4 pounds of blackberries are needed for the blackbery recipe.

Any help at all on the basic process would be great? Any other suggested sites where I can learn more of the basic information?

Thanks.

[dbrowning]

http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/starting.asp

best wine making advice

[aabigrick]

http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/starting.asp

best wine making advice

Thanks so much!

[BlackDuck]

Welcome to the Borg. That looks like a great site for winemaking. Keep us posted on how it all turns out.