Plum Wine Summer 2024

I got a gallon bag of plums and I expect to get more from another friend's tree, so I'm starting a gallon of plum slurry to make a wild yeast culture for plum wine. I squeezed the pits out, and rinse the bowl juices into the bucket. 

7/16/24

After about a week, I added another bag of plums to the mix and cooked them a bit to help with clarifying the final product. To make the final product either sweeter or more alcohol, I added a pound of honey.  I also discovered I needed a bigger bucket. I took the residue from the small bucket and rinsed it into the big bucket in hopes of using the wild yeast from the plums. 

Then I had a brain fart and dumped hot plum mash onto the starter culture, so I don't know how much if any of the wild yeast survived. When I hadn't heard it bloop after a couple days, I added another fresh plum with the skin on and a packet of commercial yeast. 

I was originally planning a smaller batch, but thanks to Sir Finn I will have more carboys, so I might add more liquid and put it in a big carboy. Not sure how I will calculate Gravity/Alcohol content in that instance, but we'll see!

I also started (7/28) a batch of golden plum wine without boiling. I'm leaving the juicy puree to ferment in the small bucket, but I took more of the skins out to maximize plum juice content in the bucket. I'm also planning to add water and honey when I transfer to a big carboy. I will get a picture then. It looks really cool. 

Primary fermentation in buckets will be as long as I don't need the bucket - probably a month or so. When I switch to the carboys, I will have to decide if I want to use modern or period methods of clarifying  - good thing I have two batches! maybe I'll do one of each.

The red plum wine developed a film, which I was worried would be mold. Phillip helped me trouble shoot and identified it as a pellicle - which would make the wine sour and funky. So, on his recommendation, I added Potassium Metabisulfite, and it still smells right! I will probably add more at bottling. 

Thanks to advice and help from Otto, we transferred both plum wines off their sediment into clean carboys today (10.19.24). The pictures don't really do the color justice.