Pink plum wine

[michjen]

Hey guys! I started this plum wine in August, just racked it yesterday for the second time, I will say it has great colour and clear! But rather tarty..... I added some back sweetener and realized after doing more reading that I should have added some potassium metabisulphite? Is it to late to add this now? Suggestions?

 

[blacksmith845]

Hi!

Hey guys! I started this plum wine in August, just racked it yesterday for the second time, I will say it has great colour and clear! But rather tarty..... I added some back sweetener and realized after doing more reading that I should have added some potassium metabisulphite? Is it to late to add this now? Suggestions?

My first question is what are you using for a sweetener? I always use Camden+Sorbistat as a 1-2 punch before back sweetening to ensure a new fermentation won't start. I currently have a batch of plum going myself, and would be interested to know what recipe you are using. Personally, I enjoy Keller's dessert wine recipe, I have never needed to add a sweetener and it borders on the strength of brandy.
On a side note, I like to use lalvin EC-1118 for my plum, what do you use?

 

[Turock]

If you just made it in Aug, you shouldn't be trying to sweeten at this time because you need to use sorbate with sugar when sweetening. And you can't use sorbate until the wine is clear. You should have set it aside and let it bulk age for about 9 months before backsweetening.

Yes, you should add some meta to it. With the first dose of meta, much of it becomes bound to sugars, bacteria, oxygen and you have very little free sulfite. Bound sulfite does not protect the wine, only free SO2 protects it. Now you'll ask how much to add---depends on the PH of the wine. Everyone who makes fruit wine should be testing their musts before fermenting, anyway. But here is another reason to know PH---so you know how much meta your wine needs for proper protection.

 

[michjen]

Yup I got excited and jumped the gun on this one! It was my first ever fruit wine... I racked it out yesterday and added benonite to it... Now I will just let her sit for a week...

 

[fabrictodyefor]

So following along the lines of plum wine....only recently started mine, 9/27/13 following Jack Keller recipe. At one point my carboy looked a lot like blacksmith845's plum wine. However not so much at this point. racked to the carboy 10/4. Today it doesn't seem like it is as active as it has been. But I am just leaving it alone for now. We are getting colder and I've yet to be able to keep my room consistently above 70, but working on getting that to stay warmer, should it be about 75 in my room?
Another question: "Recover primary and allow to ferment 5-7 days, stirring twice daily. Strain, transfer to secondary, and fit airlock. Rack after 30 days, top up, refit airlock and repeat every 30 days until wine clears. Wait two additional weeks, rack again, stabilize wine, bottle" This is a quote from my recipe, so after 30 days I should rack it to another carboy, but what do I "top up" with? If I just add water will it weaken the wine? I do not have any more plums. Thanks for the help

 

[jamesngalveston]

No 1....lot of people think jack keller is the god of wine making, not so at all.
First off most of his recipes are almost identical, just change a fruit here and there. Light on fruit and not real good instructions.
No2...dont use after two weeks, in 4 days, after 3 mos....Use your hydrometer to determine when to move to primary.
No3... Most use buckets for primary ferment, then move to secondary based on type of wine, and what the hydrometer reading is.
No4. Top of with a store bought similar wine.
No5... Turock,Josewine,Julie,Stressbaby,SaraMc,Jswordy,Dralarms,
PumpkingMan,SammyK, and some others are more apt to make a wine vs , jack keller...He is a website, that gets from others..
No doubt he has made some wine, but the above mentioned names are by far smarter and probably more experienced.
Huge difference in doing something are copy pasting web site info.
Just saying.

 

[Sammyk]

I follow Deezil, forgive me if I am giving credit to the wrong person, but it works well for us! I copied it and pasted it because it is the basic protocol and I emailed it to a new wine person I met that lives nearby. I have used the same method for a very long time.
We don't make grape wine except from our own Muscadines but make a lot of fresh fruit wine.

Fruit Wine

Most don't recommend going over 5-6lbs a gallon; and thats what I'd shoot for. I've done more (14lbs/gal) but it requires some extra work, and makes a different wine than most expect.

Freeze the fruit
Thaw the fruit
Mash the fruit

Add k-meta; wait 12 hours
Add pectic enzyme; wait 12 hours

Measure SG & TA/pH
Add sugar to 1.085 SG
Add acid blend to .65% TA

Ferment using a neutral or estery yeast - 71B, D-47, 1116, etc (NOTE we use Lavlin 71B exclusively for our fruit wines. Never had the urge to change)

Rack to carboy @ 1.010 SG
Separate liquid from lees when SG remains unchanged for 3 days
Allow lees to compact on their own, siphon/pour off available wine

Degas
Age
Stabilize
Sweeten

Bottle
Age
Drink

 

[fabrictodyefor]

No 1....lot of people think jack keller is the god of wine making, not so at all.
First off most of his recipes are almost identical, just change a fruit here and there. Light on fruit and not real good instructions.
No2...dont use after two weeks, in 4 days, after 3 mos....Use your hydrometer to determine when to move to primary.
No3... Most use buckets for primary ferment, then move to secondary based on type of wine, and what the hydrometer reading is.
No4. Top of with a store bought similar wine.
No5... Turock,Josewine,Julie,Stressbaby,SaraMc,Jswordy,Dralarms,
PumpkingMan,SammyK, and some others are more apt to make a wine vs , jack keller...He is a website, that gets from others..
No doubt he has made some wine, but the above mentioned names are by far smarter and probably more experienced.
Huge difference in doing something are copy pasting web site info.
Just saying.

OK, so in the future, I'll attempt to look elsewhere...I would love a push in the right direction....I was directed to Jack Kellers web site by someone else on this forum. But for now I am just hoping I get this batch of plum wine right. hydrometer reading before pitching yeast was 1.101, after eight days reading was 1.033, this is when I racked to carboy. (And yes I was using a fementing bucket at the time). It is good to know that when I top it off, to top it off with a similar type of wine, I appreciate that answer, I was concerned about adding, water? no such thing as plum juice, add prune juice?? lol
Took me a minute to realize, never put a time frame on the wine making process. So what should the hydrometer reading be at the point of racking to a carboy from the ferment bucket....and how do I know when I should rack again?
I often feel like I am in the dark when it comes to this wine making. This is rocket science compared to what my dad has told me!
Thanks for the help

 

[Sammyk]

Most, including us rack around 1.020 to a carboy. Leave some a couple of inches of head space or you will end up with wine in the airlock. Once the SG is around .99, it is done. Some will finish at 1.000. But if the hydrometer has the same reading for 3 days in a row, it is pretty much done. We leave it set for a few weeks for the lees to settle out. If you have more than an inch of lees, rack again and leave the lees behind. Add K-meta every 3 months or every other racking. Generally after the 3rd racking we only remove the air lock and add a crushed campden tablet or kmeta.

 

[cmason1957]

I would not be nearly as critical of Jack Kellors site. There is much to be learned there. Some here find his recipes light on fruit.
I think he has made many more award winning wines than I have and is respected by many in the winemaking community at large.

 

[Stressbaby]

No 1....lot of people think jack keller is the god of wine making, not so at all.
First off most of his recipes are almost identical, just change a fruit here and there. Light on fruit and not real good instructions.
No2...dont use after two weeks, in 4 days, after 3 mos....Use your hydrometer to determine when to move to primary.
No3... Most use buckets for primary ferment, then move to secondary based on type of wine, and what the hydrometer reading is.
No4. Top of with a store bought similar wine.
No5... Turock,Josewine,Julie,Stressbaby,SaraMc,Jswordy,Dralarms,
PumpkingMan,SammyK, and some others are more apt to make a wine vs , jack keller...He is a website, that gets from others..
No doubt he has made some wine, but the above mentioned names are by far smarter and probably more experienced.
Huge difference in doing something are copy pasting web site info.
Just saying.

I'm flattered but I don't belong in that group of experts! Runningwolf, GreginND and many others deserve mention more than me!

Regarding Keller's website, I agree with cmason, it's an excellent resource. His recipes are a great starting point but I never use them any more. As many have said, they are light on fruit, and to add body he often just adds white grape concentrate in the primary. So to me, they don't yield distinctive wines. Also, he has some interesting things in the blog if you can filter out all the politics.

 

[blacksmith845]

Jack

I personally wouldn't take any maker's word as law, but quite a bit can be taken from Jack's work. I think it's safe to say we all use variations on the things we have learned and make our own changes to fit the style we are shooting for. Indeed this is a science, but taste always must be taken into account. Heck, half the fun of this is altering things a touch here and there to see the outcome.

 

[LoveTheWine]

Jack Keller is running the biggest fruit winemaking website on the planet and there is a great deal of info good info on there. FOR FREE...
I learned a great deal in my early years of winemaking from his website.
He has been making wine for one million years, far longer then most here.
Check out all the awards he has won.

After some years of experience everyone will fine tune their skills and do things a bit different, even from Keller's methods.
Some like full bodied fruit wines that taste like sweet versions of the fruit they represent. Others like med/full bodied that are dry and taste ambiguous.

Keep in mind most sites like his are designed for easy starting recipes and are meant to be grown upon after some experience.

 

[fabrictodyefor]

I am very new at this, and I appreciate all the feedback. I have learned a lot from Jack Keller's site and I can already see that his recipes are a good starting point. I learned just after my first batch of wine, (a choke cherry that is pretty sweet!) never to follow a recipe blindly...using a hydrometer is a much better way to go as far as sugar content. Having said that, my plum is in long term bulk storage and I can't wait to give an update....but also have found out that I have to be patient for that update!

 

[blacksmith845]

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