Next Step???? Plum Wine

[JenJuhasz]

Hi all -

I'm a beginner, but this seemed like the better place for my questions. My mother in law gave me 50lbs of italian plums from her harvest this year. So, after halving and freezing them in 3lb vacuum sealed baggies, I decided to try my hand at wine making (Note - I also have 20lbs of blackberries in my freezer right now waiting their turn).

I tend to prefer wines without lots of chemicals. I also don't usually do sweet wines, so this is really a leap of faith for me! I found an older recipe for a Natural Plum Wine and jumped in back on September 16th!

So - recipe and steps and dates:

15lbs washed/halved/frozen plums
9lbs sugar
3 gallons water
3 tsps citric acid
3 packages of wine yeast (I think I used LALVIN D-47 YEAST)

Wash cut & freeze fruit.
On September 16, 2013 - placed defrosted fruit in fermentation bucket. Poured the boiling water over. Covered bucket and left for 4 days in dark place.

Stir twice daily.

After 4 days - strain.
Make a sugar syrup by cooking sugar with some of the fruit juice. Pour sugar syrup into strained fruit. Stir vigorously until well incorporated. Add yeast. Stir and cover.
Stir regularly for 5 days, then pour into fermentation bottle (September 26). Fit airlock. Leave to finish fermenting (when bubbles have ceased appearing).

When ceased fermenting, rack wine into a clean jar (January 6) and place in a cooler environment and leave. Rack again if necessary and leave until wine is stable and then bottle.


So - my question is - my wine is still really cloudy. I just took a look at it, and it's got about 3/4" of sediment at the bottom of the demijohn. I'd like to bottle and use my demijohn to try making some apple cider (I bought a kit that looked like fun), but I'm not sure it's time to do that. Should I leave it be another few months and see if it settles out?

I'm debating if I should go find another demijohn so I can make other fun things simultaneously or if I should proceed to the bottling stage and just set the bottles somewhere dark?

I read that if I leave it be longer, it won't be as sweet. So - advice? Do I continue to be super patient and leave it alone another few months? Or proceed to bottling?

Thanks!

Jen

 

[UBB]

Plum wine is notorious for taking a LONG time to clear. It's requires a lot of patience. I plan for at least 10-12 months storage before I consider bottling my Plum wine.

 

[Winorick]

1. Beg or borrow some old gallon glass wine jugs or buy a 5 gallon carboy.
2. If you have 3/4" of sludge, rack the wine
3. Yes, plan on a year before it thinks of clearing, mine took two years to clear.
4. The wine may get drier as it ages, but that should be because the yeast is still eating sugar.
5. Did you take SG readings?

 

[Turock]

You didn't seem to use any pectic enzyme either---it may never really clear.

We always bentonite our primary with plum because of the clarity problems and potential protein haze problem.

Plum should bulk age for 1 year or more--it takes quite a bit of aging to get the flavor firmed up.

You should always finish your wines to the dry stage--then backsweeten before bottling.

You should rack off the sediment--and then let it bulk age some more. Hitting it with some pectic enzyme might help the cloudiness.

I'm not a fan of this "recipe." Too little fruit and too much water. Most plum wine is delicate in flavor and it's best if you freeze the fruit, and use no water. When the fruit thaws, you then have plenty of juice for testing. There's no need for water with plums.

 

[JenJuhasz]

Wow! Thanks everyone. I really appreciate the replies. I'm going to re-arrange my cabinet so the plum wine is hiding way in the back (so I stop looking at it) and will plan to rack it in another month and let it sit until November (so 14 months total bulk aging) before bottling. I didn't use any extra anythings at all on this wine. I wanted to see how it turned out to make it really old school without chemicals or additives added in. I don't remember why this recipe appealed to me, other than that it didn't call for other things. When I try the blackberry wine, I have all those extra additives/etc and am planning to use them for that and see if I like the results.

I stopped by a local brewing place yesterday and the owner sold me a used glass carboy for $10. Forgot that I need a second bung and airlock so I have to go back, but I'll try out my cider kit with that and go from there.

Question - unrelated to the plum wine - I have a huge plastic fermentation bucket I bought when I started the plum wine. I've been watching videos on how to make apple cider from a kit and they all do it all in one fermentation bucket...but how on earth do you fit the airlock into the solid lid? I don't see any marks or anything where I'm supposed to cut a hole and fit in a bung. Thus, why I think I'm going to follow their steps, but in a glass carboy. Harder to clean, but I can see what's going on and I know I'll have the airlock fitted properly.

Anywho - I'll definitely be hanging around the site. Making this stuff is a lot of fun and keeps me from baking too much (my husband complains that I bake too many goodies, adding inches to his waistline, so I needed a new hobby).

 

[Turock]

You can ferment in an open bucket and then transfer it to a carboy after it goes to dry, or under airlock if you want. But if you do it under airlock, be sure to also stir it thru the ferment, just as you would do in an open bucket. Doing ferments under airlock retains the volatiles that contribute to nose and flavor. Especially good for whites. If you're using a very active culture, and one known to be a big foamer, it might be harder under airlock because the airlock may not want to stay in place.

Don't be afraid of chemical additions. If you were able to go back in time and taste some of the wines made the old way, you might be surprised how terrible they were. All these additions that we have for our use today, produce some of the most excellent tasting wines that have ever been made. There is also an art to the use of many additions. I would suggest studying up on how to use nutrients, tannin, acid testing, etc.

 

[user 31015]

The ethanol you are brewing is more damaging to you than anything you could add to the wine in the course of wine making

I have a similarly watery plum wine which, with plum season over (pretty much) I doubt I will be able to f-pack. Kinda disappointing the public recipes aren't really as good as they seem. Also, one year bulk aging? Ouch, I am going to have to get more carboys! I want to make more stuff!

 

[fabrictodyefor]

The ethanol you are brewing is more damaging to you than anything you could add to the wine in the course of wine making

I have a similarly watery plum wine which, with plum season over (pretty much) I doubt I will be able to f-pack. Kinda disappointing the public recipes aren't really as good as they seem. Also, one year bulk aging? Ouch, I am going to have to get more carboys! I want to make more stuff!

Yes, me too, I have a plum I started on 10/2. The friend who gave me the plums continues to ask about the wine! I keep telling him next Christmas. I've racked to a clean carboy twice and it needs to be racked again. Somewhere I read you should rack every 2-3 months.

Yes, you will find that carboys are the one item you will never have enough of!!!

 

[peaches9324]

Jen don't forget to use kmeta when bulk aging to keep out the nasties

 

[BernardSmith]

I have a similarly watery plum wine which, with plum season over (pretty much) I doubt I will be able to f-pack. Kinda disappointing the public recipes aren't really as good as they seem.

Don't rely on any recipe. Rely on principles and rules of thumb and one good rule of thumb, in my opinion is, if the juice you have before you pitch the yeast is full of taste then the wine might be, but if the juice is so diluted with water that all you taste is the sweetness and little of the fruit's flavor then don't waste your time. The wine will be too thin to enjoy. If you add water to simply make up the volume then your probably better off making less wine without the water.

 

[user 31015]

Bernard, these are all things I am learning now that I have started reading this forum!

 

[topkeg]

As a newbie, my first batches are plumb and mustang and your advice about poor plum recipes are spot on. I have been very disappointed in my first batches, very weak on taste, way to watery. My plums have been frozen for a while, and we're very juicy with high liquids content. So the question I have is, at step one, how do I find the right balance of juicy plums and water if I'm making a 5 gallon batch, I wouldn't think I would not need 5 gallons of plums, but how do I find the happy medium?


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[user 31015]

I think you buy as many plums as you can afford, freeze, mash, add only a small amount of water, sugar, and plan to top up later on to the volume you require.

I recently made a feijoa and grape wine and I added 6lt of water to 11kg of fruit and 2.5kg sugar. Turns out I could have added way less water as, towards the end of fermentation, when I lifted the pulp bag out of the bucket I clearly had nearly 15lt of wine but only 11lt of storage space in the two spare carboys! If I had added a lot less water at the start I would have had a tastier start to my wine, even if I had to top the carboys up a bit at transference to a sealed vessel.

Turock and other fruit wine makers will say that the best wines use only fruit and it's juice - which I don't doubt is true - but I think my approach "as much fruit as I think I will probably need to fit the available space" and then adding water will also work ok!

 

[jensmith]

6-7 pounds of very ripe plums per galleon came out fantastic. Also used part agave syrup part white suger. Make sure the plums taste good. Dry tastless plums do not make great wine.


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[Turock]

We shoot for 10# per gallon because many varieties of plum have delicate flavor. We found the flavor of the Japanese plum better than the American. And those golden plums really have a nice flavor. I would recommend no water on any plum. A 5 gallon batch of plum wine needs about 50# of plums!! You'll have less wine--but it will all be of good flavor. You want your fruit wines to taste just like the fruit--so that means a good amount of fruit and no water. Always freeze your fruit as that yields a lot of juice for testing purposes. Be sure to adjust your PH too--that will help the flavor more than you know.