Plum wine

[Alexihen]

Does anyone have a good recipe for plum wine without loads of chemical stuff?

[Alexihen]

I've given up hope of a recipe for plum wine, and have used the newly published book "Easy Jams, Chutneys and Preserves" to make Plum jam.  I've never made any jam before and it was very easy to follow and I now have jars of plum jam lined up on my worksurface.  The scrapings I ate from the jam pan were lovely!

[skintnbitter]

Plum Wine Sweet
 
Plums   6lb
Sugar    3.5lb
Water    1 gallon
Yeast & Nutrient
Pectic Enzyme
 
I froze my plums for a month or so before hand as this starts to brake them down. You will get plenty of juice come out of them as the start to deforst.
 
Cut plums in half, and crush them in your hands. Take half of the water, bring to boil and then pour over the fruit. Leave for 4 to 5 hours, then add the other half of the water (cold) and the pectic enzyme.  Leave for 48 hours then strain and you should have about a gallon of liquid.  Bring to boil and pure over the sugar, stirring to dissolve. Allow liquid to cool then add yeast and nutrient. Pour into your fermenting vessel and fit an airlock. When wine has cleared siphon off into a clean fermenting vessel, once fermentaion has finished , rack it again into clean bottles and cork.

[macmac]

I was looking for a plum wine recipe but everything I found was SWEET ugh so I made jam instead,does anyone know why it turns out sweet?

[puppy2]

 
Plums   4 lb.
Sugar    2 lb.
Water   6 pts.
½ tsp Acid BLEND
½ TSP Pectic Enzyme
1 tsp Yeast Nutrient
1 Campden, crushed
1 pkg. Wine Yeast
 If you use Wild Plums which are generally high in acid, use acid tester or cut down to 3 lbs plums per gallon.

1. Wash, Drain, remove stones, chop into smaller pieces. 2. Put into straining bag, crush and squeeze juice into primary. Keeping all pulp in bag, tie top and place in primary. 3. Stir in all other ingredients except yeast. Cover. 4. After 24 hours, add yeast or yeast starter. Cover and stir daily, check S.G. and press pulp lightly to aid extraction. 5. When S.G. reaches 1.040 (3 to 5 days) squeeze juice lightly from bag. 7. When ferment reaches 1.000 (about 3 weeks) syphon off sediment into clean secondary. Attach air lock. 8. To aid clearing syphon again in 2 months and again if necessary 9. Bottle when ready 10. Drink up.

If your wine needs a little sweeten at bottling add ½ tsp. Stabilizer, and stir in ¼ - ½ lb.  dissolved sugar per gallon.

[grawrc]

This one works for me - a real bbq favourite with my allotment friends:
http://www.allotments4all.co.uk/smf/index.php/topic,35318.0.html

[GrannieAnnie]

I was looking for a plum wine recipe but everything I found was SWEET ugh so I made jam instead,does anyone know why it turns out sweet?

I've heard it explained this way:  If you start any wine with too much sugar there will be sugar left over after fermentation ends. It ends because the alcohol level keeps rising and eventually kills the yeast which can only survive in a certain percentile of alcohol. Different types of yeast can survive at different percentiles though but as I recall most give out around 14% or so. ? (Not sure of that number)

 The goal should be less sugar but enough to reach an alcohol level that protects the wine from spoiling (over 12 % I believe is needed to protect it). It is important to write down the specific gravity of the juice before adding the sugar and only add enough sugar to reach a final specific gravity needed to reach which percentile alcohol you want in the finished wine. Then if you want it a little sweeter you can always add a little sugar syrup before bottling (just make sure the yeast don't wake up again and start fermenting if the alcohol level wasn't high enough to kill them off.)

Also there is a difference in recipes between British and American- your gallon is larger so if I try your recipe in my smaller US gallon it ends up too sweet.  why we couldn't stay synchronized to the European system is beyond me and still not metric!