PLUM WINE

[morgan21]

hi all
i thought i would start some plum wine

am i right in doing this

2kg plums cut and juiced
all the juice into a buket and all the muck aswell
leave for 24hrs
and yeast and y/nu
leave for 4 day
strain off so only juice left
and more suger
leave to ferment out.

as this is my first wine does this sound gd to use HELP PLEASE :

 

[oldbloke]

I did this last year, it's just starting to come nice now. With those yellowy/greeny plums.

9lbs plums halved and stoned
125g raisins
crushed campden tablet
1/4oz root ginger
4 cloves
1/2tsp citric
1/2tsp tartaric
gallon boiling water
covered and left for 4.5hrs
gallon cold water
5g pectolase
cover and leave 55 hours
strain
boil
pour over ...
5lbs sugar
[seem to have 2.5gallons...]
Split across 3 demijohns 3/4 full
cool to 21C
yeast+nutrient
Took 3 weeks to clear enough to rack,
racked into new demijohns: 2 plus a litre rum bottle
Taste when starting syphon: trying to subract the yeast, perhaps a little sharp.
Hydrometer says it's a dry wine already
Couple more weeks, deffo not bubbling at all.
Moved to cold garage to encourage total yeast death and clearing.
After about 10 days, racked to new demijohns which were topped up with bottled water to discourage oxidation.
(Full bungs, no locks)
All dry. Demijohn 2 very dry. Demijohn 1 slightly sweeter. The spirit bottle has a slight bitterness, perhaps from using a balloon as a seal.
All quite strong, from the taste - didn't bother checking the gravity when I started the batch.
Remind me of the more dangerous scrumpies from Deep Somerset (land of my youth), but with a plum edge.
Bottled a month-ish after that. Had thrown more yeast sediment.
Tried one, improved from 'not unpleasant' to 'drinkable'.
Expect further improvement.
Further 4 months aging: still smells a bit like scrumpy but tatses much better. Pleasant.
The last gallon bottled at approx 9 months old. Wine, but young.

 

[morgan21]

cheers old bloke sounds very nice might hav to change a few thing to mine now but hopefully it will turn out ok if not still many plums to go at

 

[oldbloke]

Well the ginger and cloves are only in coz the recipe I happened to have asked for them. Mine's not over-acidic so the citric and tartaric may be important (although, the house-sitters said they thought it slightly tart). I suspect the pectolase matters, you may have trouble gettign it to clear - but it will eventually, and wine's a long-term thing anyway.

 

[morgan21]

old bloke could i just filter to clear my plum wine or will it be best to wait for it to do on its own.

chris

 

[Moley]

You can't “just filter” to clear any wine, patience and/or finings are your only options. Filtration is for polishing clear wines, if you try to filter a cloudy wine it will cost you a small fortune in filter pads because they will rapidly clog up.