plums to alcoholic bevetage

[rje66]

Anyone got a recipe.??
Lots of plums to use up

[Tom]

Made a wine with mine. Smells AMAZING. Going to demijohn it now.

6lbs plums, 2lbs sugar, 1/8tsp tannin, 1tsp acid mix, 1 tsp yeast nutrient.

Mash plums, topped up with water to 5l. Sulphite (campden tablet), after 12 hrs add pectolase, after another 12 hours add red wine yeast. Treat as any wine or cider.

[auralabuse]

Thanks for that,  I'm gonna do a plum wine too,  bumper harvest this year

[Tom]

No probs. Having just loooked at mine, take the must (juice and sugary water) off of the pulp before adding the yeast. Not sure what I'm going to do with my alcoholic sludge. Luckily there's still plenty left on the tree for another go!

[auralabuse]

Nice tip,  I have never made any fruit wines so would probably have made the same mistake

[Tom]

Have a look in the Ciders Perries and Wines section. Lord Eoin might have something in there.

[rje66]

How easy is it to get pectolase ,acid mix and tannin??

Most brew shops would have it in stock?
More questions later 

[Tom]

I think both HBW and HBC do them. Acid blend is Malic, Citric and Tartaric acid together, but if you want finer control you can buy them individually. Not much money, really, seeing as you wouldn't use a wile lot.

Pectolase is more important for some fruit than others. Tannin can be added with the old cold strong tea method, but again, might as well do it properly! We don't want to go giving homebrew a bad name again, now!

Massive choice of yeasts too, so pick the right one, or pick several and do a gallon of each. The wine yeasts are cheap as chips, and there's a good variety.

[rje66]

Doing this weekend, some more questions

Made a wine with mine. Smells AMAZING. Going to demijohn it now.

6lbs plums, 2lbs sugar, ok
1/8tsp tannin-didnt get , any so will try the cold tea method, so how much? 1 tbag in cup??
1tsp acid mix, couldnt get any---substitute?
1 tsp yeast nutrient.ok

Mash plums, topped up with water to 5l. Sulphite (campden tablet), , add sugar at this stage?
after 12 hrs add pectolase,ok
after another 12 hours add red wine yeast. -got a general youngs white/red high alcohol, this ok?
Treat as any wine or cider. first wine , any more  important info, ie when to take off the fruit etc
thanks
richie

[Tom]

Probably best off a more experienced wine maker wading in here, but FWIW:

1 cup of strong tea (no milk), juice and rind of two lemons will sort you out with the basics anyway. Once you rack the wine you'll obviously want to taste it, and you'll know then whether one cup of tea was enough, etc. It's very obvious. I added more tannin to mine as it wasn't quite 'dry' enough. It was still high in sugar though, so that would affect the tannin perception, but I think I did the right thing, especially as the tannnin will mellow out further over the years.

Different schools of thought on adding sugar. I added mine with the fruit. The watery fruity sugary mush sat in my FV for about 5 days before I racked from UNDERNEATH the mush, which all floated to the top. Your yeast choice will be fine.

When I racked it from FV to demijohn I added another campden tablet, syphoned carefully to avoid adding oxygen, and CRUCIALLY filled up the airspace with boiled and cooled sugar water. This is to eliminate the headspace. It's stilll fermenting so is probably unneccesary at this early stage, but it's a habit I need to get into, so I did it.

My wine smelled and tasted totes amazeballs, and I can't wait to rack again.

That's what I did, but there are more experienced winos out there.