Plum Wine

[Eggs]

Hi all.
I'm a new brewer and and never atempted wine. This time of year we get a sudden and short lived glut of plumbs in the neighborhood. Plum sauce and relish are standards but i was considering what else i could do with the fruit. I've seen wine made from flowers and other fruits simply by crushing, adding water and (sometimes) sugar on food related TV shows. Natural yeast ferment the mix and the result is sieved after a few days and then left to ferment longer, filtered and bottled.

I thought i might give it a go, fully prepaired to produce a few literes of undrinkable goo but figured it would be fun all the same.
As a start i was going to use a few KG of crushed fruit in mabee twice the volume of water with just a litttle sugar added. If it works out i can tune it from there.

Google gives me lots of articles about making cordial or a japanese spirit flavoured with plums.

Does anyone have any thoughts or tried this type of thing?

cheers.

 

[davewaldo]

The method you outline sounds pretty good.

One thing you might want to think about is using a quality wine yeast so your guaranteed a more predictable result. Also I would only add sugar if you measure the SG and its too low (which it probably will be), then just add enough to get your desired alc %. Or if you're keen you could use honey instead of sugar and make a plum mead (melomel)

Maybe use Cote Des Blanc (aka Epernay 2) yeast. Avoid champagne style yeast unless you want it really dry! Also some yeast nutrient wouldn't go amiss.

Make sure you remove the stones and you should be good to go.

Keep us posted and take some photos

 

[drsmurto]

I have a word doc titled "fig wine" on the computer. No idea where i got it from so can't reference the originator but its not me.

Would think it could be used as a base for most fruit wines.

I have a glut of figs every year that i cant give away! I dried >5kg last year and am munching on one right now. Very tasty. Planning on making some wine from the fresh figs this year in my collection of 5L glass demi-johns.

Fig Wine

Ingredients:
2 lbs / 900 grams dried figs
2 1/2 lbs / 1,100 grams sugar
1 teaspoon pectic enzyme
1/2 pint honey
Juice of 1 lemon
Juice of 1 orange
Wine yeast
1 teaspoon yeast nutrient / energiser
8 pints / 1 gallon water
1 tsp Sodium/Potassium Metabisulphite

Method:
Boil water and add honey, stirring until it has completely dissolved. Simmer and remove any floating honey scum. Add to a clean fermentation vessel and allow honey mixture to cool. Roughly chop figs and add to two pints of boiling water (with metabisulphite), allowing them to cool for approximately 24 hours.

Strain the fig mixture and combine with the honey water in the winemaking fermentation vessel. Add all of the remaining ingredients, including the activated wine yeast. Stir each morning and evening for around four days and then strain the fig wine 'must', transferring it to a demijohn, attaching an airlock. Rack in around six weeks, and then three more times at regular intervals until one year old. Bottle

A sweeter version of fig wine can be achieved by adding extra sugar at the first racking. Fresh figs may also be used, although the quantity should be increased to around 6 lbs / 2720 grams for this wine recipe

I don't like the idea or random nature of wild yeast fermentations - probably the scientist in me - so i plan on pitching a neutral champagne yeast such as Lalvin EC-1118.

 

[Fents]

Peels on here makes the best plum wine i have ever tasted. This stuff is next level, he's been making it for close on 5 years i reckon maybe longer. I'll see if i can find the recipe. If not PM Peels he still checks AHB every now and again.

 

[Fents]

have just PM'd him for you havnt seen him on here since Nov though hopefully the PM sends him an email and he will reply if not i'll see him tommrow night and i'll ask him to put his recipe and method up.

 

[~MikE]

i'd be interested in the recipe also, my brother's place has an ultra productive plumb tree, and none of us like plumbs/plumb jam etc...

 

[fitnessfan]

Plum wine sounds like a great idea, certainly reduce the wastage from my rellies property.

@DrSmurto
I'm very jealous, when we moved house we left a great tree behind, I went back to grab some figs a few months later and the place had been flattened for units.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

To take it a little to the left of field - I reckon you should dry the plums in a food dehydrator (or the sun) and then make some sake (or buy some brandy) and then soak the dried pums in the Sake or Brandy (or Barleywine???) for a year. After a year seperate the fruit from the liquid and put the boozy plums on icecream and drink the plum flavoured booze.

TB

 

[O'Henry]

Slivovitz. Just saying...

 

[drsmurto]

Plum wine sounds like a great idea, certainly reduce the wastage from my rellies property.

@DrSmurto
I'm very jealous, when we moved house we left a great tree behind, I went back to grab some figs a few months later and the place had been flattened for units.

More than welcome to come up and take a few buckets of them.

The tree towers over the house.....

 

[Eggs]

Cheers all for the comments. :icon_cheers:

davewaldo: will keep you posted. you think its important to stone the friut?

DrSmurto: Thanks for the recipe. pectic enzyme: do i need it? what effect does the pectin have on a wine, anyone? i was keen to avoid too many additions.

Fents: cheers, id be keen to see that recipe!

Thirsty Boy: yeah, there are alot of plum infusions out there. that is what the japaneese call plum wine, and though i dont boubt it would be tasty, im out to make something from scratch. Ive had prunes in brandy before, very very nice. :icon_drool2: i might do that too. i was planing to make some prunes out of the later ripening plumbs that have more flesh. they are close though. I have some grilled figgs in brandy from last year. ill open them on christmas day and if they are any good ill use them with the roast pork or as a desert.

O'Henry: looks interesting, but im going to draw the line at distilling my own spirit. im bitin off more than i can chew already!

 

[drsmurto]

Pectic enzyme breaks down the pectin present in fruit that causes haze in wine.

If you don't mind cloudy wine then you can skip it.

 

[AUHEAMIC]

OK Eggs here it is.
Sorry Fents. Couldnt make it tonight.

This has been a work in progress and this year I made it with zero potassium metabisulfite (campden tabs) and zero citric acid. So far so good but I suspect the acidity will be too low when the wine matures. Only time will tell. I would recommend the following as a starting point.

Ingredients
Water
Very ripe Satsuma (Blood) Plums 2Kg
Sugar 1Kg
Campden Tabs
Pectic Enzyme 1tsp
Yeast Nutrient 1tsp
Citric Acid 1\4tsp
Red Wine Yeast

METHOD:-Wash, halve, stone and freeze* the fruit. Thaw the fruit and put it into a plastic food grade bucket and cover with 3L of boiling water. Add 1 crushed campden tablet and the sugar then stir till dissolved. When cool (20 - 24 deg C) add the pectic enzyme, citric acid, yeast nutrient and the yeast. Cover (I use a tea towel and ocy strap) and allow to ferment for 5 days stirring** twice a day. After 5 days strain the juice into a 5L bottle and discard the pulp, top up with water, fit an airlock and ferment out. This may take up to a month depending on the temperature. After the wine has finished fermenting, rack it into a suitable container (not plastic) and store it somewhere cool and dark to settle for the winter. In the spring, before it gets to hot, bottle your wine. For the purpose of education taste it at bottling. I find it takes a year or 3 to smooth out.

*The theoretical reason for freezing the fruit is to burst the cell walls which is supposed to improve the flavour of the wine(?). My own reason for freezing the fruit is I harvest in February (southern hemisphere) and make the wine in Autumn.

** I have found if you squash some of the plum halves at each stirring the colour is deeper in the final product.

Cheers
Peels

 

[Eggs]

Thanks for that peels. I had a little walk arround the streets last nite and noticed the plumbs are right on the cusp of droping. several of the trees i was watching have already lost their fruit! 30+ tomorow, in a week there will be none left at all. its picking day!

 

[Eggs]

Hi All,
I just thought I should update this thread with the result so far. I picked many kilos of a range of plums over the last week of December.
Due to a lack of time more than anything else I took peels advice and froze them.

Over the Easter break I fished them out and made a start on peels plum wine recipe. My first attempt without adequate gear, preparation or experience and there were quite a few stuff ups. Who knows what will result. For a while I did fear infections but it all seems happy now.

I thawed the plums over a day or so, I wasn’t prepared for how much the freezing process breaks them down! I found I had 6 kilos of very juicy pulpy plums, more liquid than solid. I separated out 4 kg for a double batch. I didn’t have time to de pip them in summer, so I pushed the lot through a course strainer removed the pips and returned the skins to the sieved pulp. I bought the lot to the boil just briefly, dissolved the sugar and let cool. Then added the remaining additives and pitched the yeast. I re hydrated the yeast in fruit juice, seemed to activate the yeast ok.

It had a lively ferment. The fumes coming off were powerful and it developed a thick purple/pink raft of bubbly pulp and skins.

It ended up in the fermenter for at least 3 weeks, as I didn’t have time to rack it and it was actively fermenting anyway. So, now the stuff ups begin.
Racking was the most disastrous attempt. I tried to drain it from the tap, the hose popped off and I lost some to the kitchen floor.
Then the pulp blocked up the tap. After some mucking about I managed to get a siphon working but the hose then blocked with pulp.
I decided to strain it through some Swiss volle into my 12 liter stock pot. That seemed to go ok, until the bands holding the volle to the pot gave way and the whole lot went in. Pulp everywhere! So then the hands had to go in. The pulp was blocking the volle too, and I had to squeeze it.
i strained the rest by tipping it through a large wire strainer.

So buy the time I’m done the kitchen, myself and a vast array of pots are covered in plum pulp and fermented juice. Though it smelled ok!
I’ve ended up with 5 liters in a demijohn and another 2 in a soft drink bottle. Despite the fact that everything had been carefully cleaned using boiling water and starsan I was still concerned that contact with the air and my (clean) hands may make infection unavoidable.

It’s been in the garage since and is still fermenting slowly. You can see bubbles still rising through the liquid. It is clearing though and a dark ruby color. Sniffing at the airlock reveals only a fruity smell and there’s nothing nasty floating on the surface. Both bottles have a thick yeast layer at the bottom.

So there it is. I’m not sure if I should rack it again soon to get it off the yeast or wait until it finishes showing any signs of fermentation.
Perhaps Ill leave it and rack it in spring and bottle after that. I might need to add some sort of finnings to help avoid sediment when the time comes.
Sorry for the essay, but so often you never hear what comes of these experiments people start on here!

Cheers.

 

[O'Henry]

Once the lees are about 1/2-1 inch thick (depending on diameter of the fermenter), I would rack it. Even if it is still fermenting, you want to avoid time on large amounts of lees. A little is okay, but huge amounts, no good. That said, I've left wine for a while with no noticeable effects (the wine was pretty shithouse though, maybe this had something to so with it).