Fermented Plums: Wine
Introduction
What else are you supposed to do with too many rubbery plums? There’s jammy, salty, and boozy. So I did all three. For jam this recipe from J. Kenji López-Alt is spot on and brings out a lovely plumminess to my otherwise lackluster plums. I then lacto-fermented some. The rest will be boozy. Maybe. Last year (2020) I tried making plum brandy because the haul was absurdly large but flavorless.
I bottled the brandy too soon and the sugars did not fully ferment so it was too sweet. Or maybe the brandy I added (you think I distilled the liquor?) was not high quality enough. Whatever, the product was too sweet. This year I went for plum wine from the not-watery but not-juicy early-picked crop (grrr, children).
Getting Started: Ingredients, Tools, Method
Rather than copying the recipe faithfully from the recipe site I used I’ll just link it below.
Mountain Feed’s Plum Wine Recipe
NB: Unlike vegetable fermentation and, to a lesser degree, kombucha, sterilization of all equipment is vital in booze production. The alcohol does not inhibit bad bacteria and mold growth early enough in the process. With kraut and kombucha the initial product is hostile to bacteria and mold (too salty, low pH) but smooshed plums are like an invitation. Therefore you discourage growth by having STERILE containers and not much room for air. I use Five Star StarSan to sterilize everything.
Also: Booze making requires a bit more equipment which the recipe site lists. It can add quite a bit to initial costs but it’s generally one-time purchase stuff.
Notes on recipe: First, I did not have honey on hand in the quantities needed so I substituted out with regular sugar. I used 400g of granulated sugar instead of honey.
To get this quantity I looked up the weight of honey: 1 cup = 340g. Therefore 1.5c = 510g. Honey is 80% sugar so I took 0.8 of the honey weight to get ~400g sugar.
Second, the rubbery plums did not produce nearly as much wine as the recipe indicated. My guess is because they were not juicy. Instead of 1.5g of young wine I got less that 1 gallon. Oh well.
Observation Notes and Results
Day 1: Crazy bubbling and foaming.
Day 2: Removed, washed, and re-sanitized the airlock which was filled with plum foam
Day 10: Stopped bubbling
3 weeks: Racked off wine to new, sanitized carboy leaving lees behind. Tasted it - it’s ok. Not very sweet, fruity, or sour.
3. 5 weeks: Realized the temperature sensor for the warming mat was not on the mat. The mat has been valiantly trying to heat up to 75F but not able to because the sensor is hanging out in a 60F room. I am concerned the early completion of fermentation was due to the yeast being killed by high temperature. The mat was actually 85F!!!!! Should I bottle it anyway or try to kick start fermentation again???? I’ll check specific gravity. If it is 0 then at least I know all the sugar fermented and there’s alcohol. Stay tuned.
… Checked SG. It was zero so sugar fully fermented. Likely a too speedy ferment but not a death knell for the yeast.
4 weeks: Mixed 20g of corn sugar into the wine and then bottled it. The priming sugar will reactivate the yeast and the in-bottle fermentation should lead to carbonation. Although the recipe did not call for this I felt the wine tasted a little meh. It had some plum notes and was neither too dry nor too sour but lacked some dimension. Maybe it needed more acidity. I hope carbonation, which increases acidity, helps. At the very least will add some mouthfeel interest.
6 weeks: Tried the bottled wine. It was still just OK. It was not that fizzy, just slightly perlé. To improve acidity I added 1/8 tsp of acid blend for wine to the remaining half (20 fl.oz.) bottle. I will open another bottle and add:
1/4 tsp of the acid blend
1 tsp sugar
1/16 tsp wine tannin (such small quantities are used that when divided down to a singular 20 fl.oz. bottle it’s hard to measure by volume. I chose 1/16 tsp because I can eyeball it with my 1/8 tsp measuring spoon. So accurate.)
