Plum wine confusion.

Me and my friend are trying our hand at making plum wine. We are thinking about adding Syrah raisins and grape musk to the mash.
So my questions are.
1. should we add one or both?
2. What would it do?
3. do we need to add less sugar to compensate for the added raisins?

Thank you!

the raisins sound fine, if that is the style that you are shooting for. I am not sure what you mean by "grape musk"? maybe you mean "grape must" as in the mixture of fruit that is then fermented into wine?
what you add to the wine depends on what you are trying to get out of the wine. are you shooting for a lighter bodied wine, or a heavy? red style, white, or rose? also what kind of plums are you using as that will change what you can do as well.
long story short we need some more info so we can advise you better.
off topic, but do you brew beer? just wondering since you used the term "mash"

Sorry this is my first time making plum wine or anything wine related.
Must was what i meant.
We are trying to make a heavy bodied vary dry plum wine. As far as i know the plums we are using are victory plums.

My end goal is to start making beer, hefeweizens as a primary focus. Used the word mash cuz i did not know what else to call the plums after they are mushed up.

Hope that helps you help me, thanks for the reply.

It fine! we all need to start somewhere, welcome to the obsession-er i mean hobby! haha, and after the fruit has been crushed it's called must
Well I am not sure on a red plum wine, in my experience it makes a nice "White" wine. but as i think about this many red wines are said to have "Plum notes" so hey, why not!
if you are wanting a red style wine i would say go ahead and add the raisins, they will add body. what kind of grapes are you thinking of using for your added must? the type of grape you would want would be something that pairs with plums.
As for sugar, you should always go by your hydrometer, not by what is called for by a recipe, i try to shoot for a S.G. below 1.090 and above 1.080.
now onto the plums themselves. if i remember correctly victory is a purple plum that Canada released back in the 1980-90's. i think they are fairly good sized too. if yours aren't this or my memory is wrong feel free to correct me, i don't work with plums much.
Do you have a TA kit? i would test the acid of the juice of some of your plums and then use that to decide how much you want to have in your wine.

We have all the equipment and all the ingredients the recipe calls for. We want to use Syrah raisins, the thought for this is that it will lend more body to the wine. From what iv looked up the victory plums need acid added to the recipe.

would you be willing to share your recipe? then i can see what you are thinking better.
most recipes add water to dilute the fruit and then add acid to bring the level back up to an acceptable range. while this is fine for some fruits that would be too strong if we used more juice (ie blueberries) it is often better to use more fruit to get more body and flavor in the wine. that's why i was asking about the acid level (TA=Total Acid) because if the undiluted juice is high in acid you'd want to dilute the juice with water, low add acid to bring it up. but a good rule of thumb is the more fruit the better.
Syrah raisins will add body, any raisins will add body, but the fact that they are from a wine grape will be nice.
Hope that i am making sense!

volver said:

3. do we need to add less sugar to compensate for the added raisins?

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Just to help you out with that point, raisins are typically about 65% sugar by weight. So, yes, you may have to use less sugar than your recipe calls for. The important thing, as dorfie points out, it NOT to go by a recipe, but rather to go by the specific gravity.

6 lbs plums
1-1/2 lbs fine granulated sugar
Water to one gallon
1-1/2 tsp acid blend
1 tsp pectic enzyme
3/4 tsp yeast nutrient
1/4 tsp yeast energizer
1/8 tsp grape tannin
wine yeast

We could not find the grape tannins. Had alot of plums so we double the recipe plus we added the raisins, just a hand full tho.

Did you test the sugar level? the sugar in the recipe alone gives you an S.G. of 1.0675, i have no idea the level that plum juice has.
with the added raisins and fruit i would guess that you are ok on the tannin side of things.
What yeast did you go with?

dorfie said:

Did you test the sugar level? the sugar in the recipe alone gives you an S.G. of 1.0675

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Just trying to understand better, how did you come up with this number? I thought the rule of thumb is 1 cup sugar will raise 1 gallon up by .018. I also was told that 2 cups equal 1 pound of sugar. So by this math 1.5 lbs would be 3 cups sugar so .018x3=.054 so I came up with 1.054 with just the sugar alone.

JimmyT said:

Just trying to understand better, how did you come up with this number? I thought the rule of thumb is 1 cup sugar will raise 1 gallon up by .018. I also was told that 2 cups equal 1 pound of sugar. So by this math 1.5 lbs would be 3 cups sugar so .018x3=.054 so I came up with 1.054 with just the sugar alone.

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There are several "rules of thumb" out there but the most accurate would be ones that are dependent on weight (lbs) instead of volume (cups)
1 lb of sugar is approximated to be two cups plus two Tbs of sugar, and one lb of sugar that has been dissolved in one gallon of pure water gives a S.G. of 1.045. so math wise you would take 1.5 * .045 and get .0675.
It's possible that you're approximations of 1 cup=.018 was made because of a temperature error, as that can change the gravity of the must, or it could have just been over rounded down.

No we are not quite sure how to test the sugar levels. Something to look up i guess. We used cote de blance yest i think.

We got bubbles, looks like the yest is doing its thing.

Volver, you test the sugar levels with a tool called a hydrometer. it measures the amount of dissolved solids (ie sugar) in a liquid. it looks like a glass tube with a ruler like scale on the top. they are one of the tools that is advised for every home wine and beer maker to have.
Hope that the wine is going well!