overabundance of plums

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kegmeister

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Due to unusually good weather or an accidentally good pruning/fertilizing job I have about 150 pounds of plums ready to come off of the tree any day. The juice currently has an SG of 1.048 and might go up a bit before picked. Usually when i make the wine I take about 40 pounds which yields 3-4 gallons juice, top up with water to 7 gallons total (to fit 6-6.5 gallon carboy as a secondary) and adjust sugar to 1.090 +/-. Due to the large number of plums I am considering trying a batch with 100% plums but wonder if there might be some off flavors gererated by that concentration of plum skins, or the large amount of pectic enzyme ill no doubt need, or potentially larger amounts of fining agents, or lower ph.

The 40 pound recipie turns out a good wine (fourth year now) and I would hate to ruin all those plums on an experiment that someone else has tried already. Thanks in advance for your coments.
 
Keg. First off let me also welcome to the boards.
I try to make all of my fruit wines using100% juices. I really love the heavy body and the powerful flavors. More aging may be required to smooth out the tastes.
Brad
 
I like to know how YOU know that there is 150# ON THE TREE ... LOL!
 
well, last year I made one 5 gallon batch of plum wine from about 40 pounds, and 18 jars of plum jelly from approximately 30 more pounds. This year there are easily twice that many plums still on the tree.
In addition 2 weeks ago three medium branches broke off of the tree, laden with semi ripe plums. I did my best to ripen those and mushed them up and fermented them last week. That batch is ready to go into a secondary in a day or two and ill use that batch (6 gallons) to top up the ripe plum wine rather than open last years bottles.
So while 150# is indeed a guess I think it is a pretty good one. The tree grows next to the patio, is probably 60 years old, has been pruned to shade the patio, not to bear fruit. As a result it is HUGE, and well tended for as it would be irreplaceable in its role as shade for the patio.
 
ok so, I spent about 4 hours yesterday picking plums. I filled my wheelbarrow to overflowing and stopped. I took all those plums to work and froze them in the freezer overnight. This morning I spent an additional four hours mushing the pits out of the plums by hand and added the campden tabs. the wheel barrow held 120 pounds of plums and i have more to go.

I have eleven gallons of plum juice, pulp and skins ready to get yeast tomorrow. I think half will be port, and half wine. If anyone has some tips or success stories about port blends or additions or yeast suggestions, send em my way.
 

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