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I live in Southern California. I have an easy time finding websites and sources discussing buying wine grapes by the ton. I even found 1 source that will sell a minimum of 100 pounds. However, I cannot find any sources for buying fresh grapes in quantities less than that. Does this exist? How do folks find local fresh grapes for homebrewing?

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    I'd recommend reaching out to local homebrewing clubs and asking around. Sometimes around this time of year there are cider or fruit pressings as a club activity.
    – rob
    Commented Sep 9, 2020 at 16:45

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I'd check craigslist. I poked around on some Southern California CL pages for "grapes" and saw some entries with pick yourself pricing for folks wanting less than 100 pounds.

Granted, 'Southern California' is a big place- I have no idea what region you are so I can't verify, but it's worth a check.

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  • That's awesome. There's a few local growers just selling directly. Thank you!
    – xaviersjs
    Commented Sep 11, 2020 at 0:25
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In the UK (south east) there are many orchards, fruit farms and PYO (pick your own). The best way I found is if you grab a couple of bottles of your last brew and visit a farm on the off chance, if can speak to someone important (may need a second visit) and explain what you are trying to achieve and that it is for personal consumption. A couple of bottles generally goes a long way, also with a promise of a couple more bottles made from their own produce once it is ready.

I already do this with a hop farm, and a pear farm. Next year I will be doing exactly this with bee keepers, as I would like to try making a mead which will need about 30lb (14Kg) of honey for a couple of batches ;)

I have found that many farmers produce their product and sell it for profit (duh) so they don't really have time/effort to ferment it, so if you can give them something back they really do appreciate it, more so than the actual $$.

Or another alternative might be labour in return for grapes, you never know you may learn something too!

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My LHBS sells them by the crate during harvest season. Each crate is approximately 36lbs of grapes. It takes 2 crates to make ~5 gallons of wine.

My LHBS doesn't ship the grapes so I can't help you there. Its for local pick up only. I only point out that maybe you can search local homebrew shops around you to get something similar in quantity.

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  • Yeah, that's a good idea. That's where I initially started. I only have 3 homebrew shops that I can find with a 45-minute drive. One of them does fresh grapes of 100+ pounds pre-order only. The other two don't do grapes (althought they sell wine yeast). I thought maybe people in the know have some alternative to LHBS. I may just bite the bullet and buy 100 pounds of grapes.
    – xaviersjs
    Commented Sep 9, 2020 at 19:12

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