Plum wine

[oldbloke]

Spotted a couple of kilo punnets of plums reduced to a quid in Tesco, thought it'd be rude not to, so started a plum wine today.
Reminded me I don't think my recipe is on here...

I've had some good plum with fruit from local trees, not sure exactly which variety, but the yellowy ones rather than the red/purple ones.
It goes more or less like this, per gallon:
Stone 4lb(ish) of plums and halve or quarter them
Bung them in a bucket with a crushed Campden, 75g(ish) of chopped raisind, 2 cloves, 5g or so finely sliced root ginger, half to 1 tsp acid (I like a citric/tartaric mix), half a pound of sugar, and boiled water to make up to a bit less than a gallon.
My original recipe says to pour boiling water over, but that's just asking for trouble from the pectin, so today I used recently-boiled water.
When it's cooled a bit, a generous tsp pectolase.
Leave to do the flavour extraction for 3 days to a week, stirring occasionally
Strain onto the rest of the sugar - my notes says 2lbs, but I may first do some sanity checks on the ABV this time
My notes say bring this to the boil, or nearly, but again that's just asking for pectin trouble, and I'm not clear what it's supposed to do apart from make the sugar easier to dissolve, so a little gentle warmign for that will do this year.
Once cool enough, pitch yeast and add nutrient, ferment until done, rack onto stabiliser.
Finings may be needed.
This wine tends to need a bit of time for a slight bitterness to fade, but is then gorgeous.

sounds lovely i may have a bash with some damsons back end

Plums also make an interesting liqueur, make as you would sloe gin. I used rum and it was gorgeous

[oldbloke]

Plums also make an interesting liqueur, make as you would sloe gin. I used rum and it was gorgeous

We've done plum rum too. I think plums might suit vodka as well. Not a big fan of gin, but we have sloes in the back hedge and sloe gin is nice.

Round my way the cherry plums are nearly ready for picking and the crops on them are huge this year (the rainy but mild spring). I'll be giving this a go with my foraged bounty!

Just started a gallon of this it was hard not eating the plums my favourite fruit!!

[oldbloke]

I went a bit weird and pitched half the yeast in the bucket, thinking fermenting on the pulp might get more colour/flavour and keep out any other microorganisms, then today strained it onto 900g sugar and pitched the rest of the yeast. Left a pint of headspace (it's in a pint pot in the fridge) and the damn stuff just started escaping about 30 minutes ago. Oh well. Not the first time, won't be the last.

Just got my plum wine on the go. Hopefully it will not be quite as messy as the Blackberry was to strain!

mother-in-law told me that you get a better plum flavour if you leave the stones....

obviously if you have frozen the fruit to help juice extraction
then you also have a chance of broken stones
and as I recall that is not good

debate on stones commence.....

I would like to think a plum stone is the same as a seed of a grape, but when I make peach or nectarine wine I always remove the stone before freezing as it is more easily to prepare for fermentation.

Moving the plum wine (stones removed before freezing) from the bucket to a DJ Friday having removed the squidgy plums and raisins. When I put it in the DJ having warmed with the sugar should I just top up with water and adding the yeast /nutrient? Should I leave it a few days to let the initial fermention to finish then top up?

[oldbloke]

Give it a few days before fully topping up.

Great, thanks

hi old bloke, were you on a forum not so long back, where some americans took over,
shame about that, I have a few spare demijohns,and would like to make some plum wine,
would you be so kind to give us a detailed account on how to make this,
as I have only done kit wine,
thanks sam.

[oldbloke]

Yes, used to be on another forum, most of the admins and mods here were admins and mods there, once. Life, eh? Water under the bridge now.

Rough instructions are in 1st post of thread, but here's /exactly/ what I've done this year. Mind you not much of it is critical, you can alter things a fair bit and still get good wine.

2014-07-13
4lbs plums halved and stoned; 75g raisins chopped; crushed campden tablet; ~15g root ginger, thinly sliced; 2 cloves; 1/4tsp citric; ; 1/4tsp tartaric; 1/2lb sugar; 1.7l boiled water
Left an hour or so; 1l boiled water; Left to cool; 2tsp(ish) pectolase
2014-07-15
Pitched half pack GV5, tsp nutrient
2014-07-19
Sieved to demi, mixed with 909gm sugar on the way. Pulp mashed and sparged; Rest of yeast sachet and more nutrient
2014-09-10
Racked onto stabiliser and extra pectolase

Even after the stabiliser this was managing to push out the odd bubble. It seems to have finished now but isn't properly clear yet. I might just leave it, or I might whack some finings in.

When I first transferred my plum wine to the DJ's it was a lovely, well, plum colour. 24 hours later it was a kind peach colour. Is this normal? I was rather disappointed really...

[oldbloke]

It'll end up some sort of yellow whatever you started with, usually quite pale

ok, thanks

Going to try this this weekend i think!

My Plum wine has been in the DJ's since 26/9 and still gives the occasional bubble. Should I rack it off into another DJ for a month before transferring to yet another DJ and stabilising or should I just leave it where it is for another couple of weeks? Or, 3rd option is it ready to be stabilsed now?

[oldbloke]

Ideally, take a gravity reading to see if it's finished. If it is, rack onto stabiliser, leave to clear. It's not had a month yet though so I doubt it's fully done. I'd just leave it at least another week, probably 3.

ok cheers

I too am doing some plum wine would any one recommend coloured glass for bottling or will clear be ok

clear will be ok if the bottles are stored in a cupboard, or under the stairs, or somewhere dark and out of direct sunlight.
You don't get skunking from sunlight in wine, but if left in direct sun, the colour will fade over time - which is why green glass bottles are generally prefered for red wines. White wines do not suffer this, hence why they're mostly in clear bottles.

Plum wine has been stabilised and is now clear. Should I leave it a month or so in the DJ to mature or bottle straight away? It is currently in the bathroom ( coldest place in my flat) as I don't have anywhere dark to leave it.