Hi again sagely folks of the wonderful world of wines.
My wife and I picked 44lbs of (I believe) Victoria plums last night from a friends garden - coulda picked twice that easily, but we only had about an hour and no use for 88lbs of plums...but I digress. These are very ripe and sweet indeed (but not rotten in the least!), and needed processing straight away (skins would 'slide off' with little effort - they would of all browned from the handling of picking them if left).
36lb of them we squished the (2 and a bit lbs of) stones out of, and mashed (smooshed 'em good with our clean hands - didn't have the time left to pulp 'em smoothly) into a primary ferm bucket. This gave us 3.5 UK gal of pulp. I added 4 dissolved camden tablets and 4 tsp pectolase, sealed the lid on and left 'em.Now, there's no way we are going to get all the juice/sugar out of them in this state (is there?), as they are only 'smooshed', and we don't own/have access a press - any tips? Should I stick the bucket in the chest freezer for a while? Run them through a blender (bit-by-bit - it ain't even nearly a
36 UK gal blender, unfortunately.....heheheh....)?Also, Will it be OK to ferment this pulp without diluting (we're going to add some blackberries and maybe elderberries to, maybe enough to make the pulp up to about 4-5 or so UK gal)? Or should we be looking at making 10 UK gal from this by adding sugar and water to the correct volume and gravity?
The thing I'm worried about is, even if we get a good gravity from this (undiluted) juice without adding any/much sugar, is that it will be too acidic (the fruit is sweet, but the skins are rather acid, and tannic) to ferment as-is. Have no way of testing this at the moment. Also, if we can't separate the juice from the pulp well, we aren't going to get anywhere near accurate gravity readings (OK, I gave in this time and agreed to do the hydrometer thing, for the first time......).
We are after a wine of about 15 - 17 % ABV, and bone dry. Haven't a clue yet what OG I'm looking for to achieve this, either.
TIA for any help, advice, flippant and/or sarcastic comments, insults to my ancestors etc. (It's all good).
Cheers!
Shaun aRe
A smile shared with another is 2 smiles.
',;~}~