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Plums pulped for wine - tips needed!

Sounds like it'll be a great one! Nice, concentrated fruit flavours...hmmmmmmm!

Are you going to leave it fermenting on the pulp? That'd surely give it a nice colour as well as flavour!

Hope it goes better than you expect it to ',;~}~

The outside temps here have dropped quite a bit these past days (bloody damned chilly cycling over the hills to work this morning! Note to self: Time to get full fingered gloves before I get frostbiteded fingers and have to use 'utensils' to smoosh me fruit!), and we only have one spare heating pad in the shed, so that is under the biggest barrel until we can get some more (weekend possibly). However, the (small!) shed has warmed up incredibly (maybe ~70+F in there 7:00 this morning despite it being about (guessing) ~50 F outside) - will have to measure it.....) with 17 gallons of fermenting wine going crazy in there. The big barrel is going best and is positively ooooozing CO2 (I put a dry airlock in it to help keep dust out, but a little wine got into it, and it's just hovering near the exit in a bubbling froth), but the other 3 are in a rather excited state despite having no heaters on them ',;~}~

This is the first time I've used a 'yeast energiser' as well as nutrient (got it in a pre-blended pack) - the stuff certainly seems to work very well.

I'm happy!

Shaun aRe

Reply to
Shaun Rimmer
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Just under a US gallon of raw juice from 10 lbs of red plums. Not bad! SG of the juice was 1.054 before chaptalizing to 1.096. Acid wasn't measured, but tasted fairly mild for plums - I'm trusting instinct here.

The plums essentially cold macerated for 24 hours while thawing, which let the skins leach much color into the juice. The juice is deep magenta. I decided to ferment the juice w/o pulp after recovering most of the liquid and color from the cold soak.

Thanks - same to you!

Roger

Reply to
ninevines

Indeed!

Ah - while the fruit we picked was _very_ sweet, the skins on them were quite acid indeed, and of course blackberries are quite acid too - I diluted quite a bit, and think it'll be just fine - hope I kept enough concentraion of flavour in there.

Ooooo, sounds good!

Cheers Roger!

Shaun aRe

Reply to
Shaun Rimmer

Acid test kits are really quite cheap ($6-7) and relatively easy to use. You are really in experimental territory here and I would suggest to get one and test it. It will be a lot easier to correct any problems now than after it finishes. Just a suggestion.

Ray

Reply to
Ray

Funnily enough, me too ',;~}~

Hey, that's good going!

The plums we have, look like Victoria plums (but not 100% sure they are) - they're coloured similar to a nectarine - yellow through pink to pinky-red, with yellow/orange flesh

Oooooo scrummy, heheheh.......(no, I'm not really easily excitable, honest.....)..

Me? Well, I'm not _that_ practiced at this lark. Though I've been making wines for over 15 years, I've made few, and small batches until recently.

I myself would go easy on the rosemary, as it's a strong oily herb - you may well need less than you think.

When I used lavender (also pungent and oily), I only put 1 small flower spike per gallon of must, and the flavour is _really_ there, just at the right level though, which in my opinion, is in the background right behind the fruit.

As for using all juice, if you think the plums aren't too acid, then why not?!? Our plums, although very sweet and ripe, had rather acid skins, so diluting them seemed best, but I only figured that out by reading this group anyway!

Anyhow, don't take anything I say outside of what I've picked up from the learned folks here as good advice - I'm just spouting my opinions.

Hmmm, well I've seen stacks of country wine recipes that call for raisins, and I 'figured', rightly or wrongly, that it was for added flavour body/to give the wine a good solid bass-ie base to lay the fruity high notes over, as well as maybe for the fructose.

The last wine I made, I used some partially dried figs for the added body reason, and they certainly did that.

',;~}~

NSS! (Heheheh - it's a cheeky acronym is that!)

I'm sure it will be better ',;~}~

Take care,

Shaun aRe

Reply to
Shaun Rimmer

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