As is common this time of year, our plum trees are loaded with fruit and we need some way to get rid of them. After starting the pear wine a couple weeks ago, I figured that making some plum wine would be pretty good. After looking around at a few recipes, this is what I ended up with (I am only doing a 3 gallon batch of this wine):
| Ingredients | |
| 15 Lb. | Ripe Plums |
| 6 Lb. | Sugar |
| 1 tsp. | Grape Tannin |
| 1.5 tsp. | Acid Blend |
| 3 | Campden Tablets |
| 1.5 tsp. | Pectic Enzyme |
| 1.5 tsp. | Yeast Nutrient |
| 1 package | Cote des Blancs Wine Yeast |
Process:
After rinsing all of the plums, I removed any stems and all of the pits. I then hand-mashed the plums in the primary fermentation bucket. I added all of the sugar and then added some hot water (160 °F), enough to reach the 3.5 gallon mark on my bucket. All of the sugar was dissolved by stirring the must.
After letting the must cool to room temperature I added Pectic enzymes, yeast nutrient, grape tannin, acid blend, and Campden tablets (crushed). I stirred it up well and then put the lid on the bucket to sit for 24 hours, after which I pitched the yeast and sealed the bucket again with an airlock.
Put into Primary on 9-22-09. Original Gravity measured at 1.125 (16.8% potential alcohol).
Racked into three 1-Gallon carboys on 10-7-09. Specific Gravity measured at 1.020.
Racked into three 1-Gallon carboys on 11-18-09. Specific Gravity measured at 1.004. The wine is not clear yet, still mostly opaque, but has a pretty good flavor already.
Racked into 3-Gallon bucket on 12-5-09. The wine is still not clear, but is getting less opaque and starting to settle a bit. I put the wine into a larger container in hopes that maybe the wine will settle faster this way, and also this makes it a bit easier to work with. I added about 3/4 Gallon of water to top of the bucket, and I added 3 crushed Campden tablets to kill any yeast. I plan on bottling this in a week or two.
Bottled into about 40 12-ounce bottles on 12-12-09. Final gravity was measured at 1.002, meaning the wine is 16.7% alcohol by volume. An initial taste test before bottling showed that the wine was mildly sweet and fairly strong. Will open these around Christmas to see how they turned out.
My first wine making effort, don’t know the slang or how-to, but, want to read your postings but all of them are cut off on my iPad!
Help!
Plums have been run through a steam juicer into carboys, now what?
Hi Kelly,
Sorry the site was cut off, I’ve made some adjustments to the theme so it should be scaling to fit better on your iPad now.
After you have the juice in the carboy, you will want to add any additional sugars (if you want to increase the alcohol content). Once the sugars have been added/dissolved, let the juice cool down to about 70 degrees F before adding your yeast. Then seal the carboys with an airlock, and start the waiting game. Let me know how it turns out!