Plum Cherry Experiment

[K&GB]

I bought six lbs of Chilean plums from Sam's last week with making plum wine in mind. But the plums weren't the best and not quite ripe. I tabled the idea for a week and then remembered that I hada couplequarts of pure cherry juice in the pantry. So I decided to try the following recipe.


6 lbs plums
1 quart black cherry juice
1 quart sour cherry juice
1/2 lbs red flame raisins
Aprox. 1-1/2 lbs sugar
water to ~ 2-gal
1/2 tsp pectic enzyme
1 tsp yeast nutrient
1/2 tsp acid blend
2 campden tablets
spash of liquid grape tannin
montrachet yeast


I crushed the campden tablets and mixed them insome water. When I cut up the plums I mixed the pieces in the water to prevent browning. Crushed the plums in a bowl as much as possible.Put the plums and raisins in a strainer bag and poured boiling water over it. Later I added the cherry juice and everything else except the yeast. Kept adding sugar to get a starting SG of 1.085. Let sit overnight and pitched the yeast this morning. Fermenting vigorously tonight.

 

[NorthernWinos]

I had some Flame Raisins that I had thought of maybe putting in some wine...found on the label they had oil on them.

Don't know if it would have been enough oil to hinder the fermentation, so just ate them.

 

[Wade E]

Great idea there NW, it probably would have created a film on the top of the wine from the oils. K&GB, that sounds good and when doing fruits that will brown you can use ascorbic acid which will prevent browning and oxidation but will not hinder fermentation like meta will. I use for all my fruit wines from the start and use it if I plan to make sparkling wine out of a batch.

 

[Bert]

K&GB....Did the plums have pits in them and did you remove them???? All the plum recipes I have looked at or have done call for removeing the pits...Good luck...I have three plum wines in the works, they all smell great and well taste, they are still very young....

 

[K&GB]

NW, I bought the raisins at a roadside stand. There was no label, but the vender didn't think they'd been preserved. I ate a few and didn't notice any oil. Thanks for the tip about browning, Wade. Yes bert, I cut the plums into pieces and removed the pits.


The next time I try plum wine, I'll wait for better (more ripe) plums. Not sure how this plum-cherry experiment will turn out, but it sure is fermenting fast. Also, that strainer bag full of plums and raisins is half the size it was a couple days ago.

 

[Bert]

I have a plum-pear in the secondary, racked at 1.022 SG on Wed. and it is still going strong....good thing I put the 5 gal. batch in 6 gal. carboy or it would be a big mess..

 

[K&GB]

Wow!This is the fastest I've ever seen something ferment (not that I have much experience). I pitched the yeast Friday morning with an SG of 1.085. Today (Sunday) the SG was 1.010 so I transferred to secondary.


I really wanted more time fermenting with the plums and raisins, but I had to discard the strainer bag prior to transfer. I squeezed the fool out of it before chucking it to get all the goodies out. But I thought maybe more contact time with the plum skins would improve the color. Maybe next time I'll let it stand a couple of days before pitching the yeast. Does Montrachet always ferment that fast?

 

[Wade E]

Is this your 1st time doing a small batch as smaller batches ferment much faster because it has a lot less sugar to ferment. In my experience, this is a normal rate of fermentation for a small batch. There are yeasts that will go a little faster like Premier Cuvee and slower ones like Cotes Des Blanc.

 

[K&GB]

This is my fourth fruit wine in as many weeks. But I've been experimenting with different starting SGs and different yeast. The last two started at 1.085 SG and fermented very quickly. The first two started with higher SGs and took a couple days more to finish primary. Guess that stands to reason. Thanks for the insight Wade.

 

[K&GB]

I finally racked the plum-cherry off the lees the other day. Since I only had one gallon jug left, I had to use a plastic applejuice jug for the second gallon. This wine is almost clear already. Since I had some headspace left in the plastic jug, I decided to sweeten this gallon. I tossed 8-10 oak cubes into the other gallon and plan to leave it dry.

 

[Wade E]

I think the oak addition was a good idea.

 

[K&GB]

Update on the Plum Cherry.


I was trying to keep two 1-gal batches separate with variations, but wound up combining the two batches on 21 June. No more notes until bottling on Aug 31st. By that time, the wine had developed into something quite nice. Mostly cherry flavor- not sure about the plum. Wish I had tried the American oak with this one, but I didn't. Still it turned out nice and definitely drinkable. Looking forward to opening this sometime after Christmas.


Ken