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This is the first batch of wine that I've made this year. I didn't feel like making rhubarb wine this year because I already have a couple of gallons of it in the basement from previous years.
We have 2 plum trees and one of them actually produced a fair amount of fruit this year for the first time since we planted them. I figured that this was a good time to use them to make wine, but I only had about 2 pounds of plums from the tree, not enough for a gallon batch. I went to the local farmer's market stand to see if they had any over ripe plums. You can usually get a better deal on them because they're hard to sell otherwise. Of course, the overripe plums are the good ones to make wine from because they're soft and about as sweet as they're going to get. I ended up with 8 pounds of overripe yellow plums to work with. These are a small plum, so there's a bit more work involved with removing the skins and pits, but since they're overripe, they're very soft, making the job a bit easier.
After getting all the skins and pits removed, I mixed in the 2 pounds of my red plum sludge, and added a few cups of filtered water to the pot and boiled the plum sludge for a while to kill any mold spores and wild yeast that might be present. This was after the sludge had sat overnight to cool off.
Then I cleaned up my new 2-1/2 gallon glass jug to use as the primary fermentor for the "must" as the raw water and sludge mixture is called. I added the ingredients that are called for in the wine recipe booklet, the acid blend, yeast energizer, and the pectin enzyme.
Then I added more water to bring it up to the recommended amount. I also added 2 pounds of sugar to the mix. I should have added 4 pounds of sugar as the recipe calls for, but I was running out of room in the jug. I can always add more sugar when I transfer the must to the secondary fermentor, that's a 3 gallon glass "carboy" so there's more space.
I added the wine yeast last, and then covered the mouth of the jug with a cloth held down with a rubber band. The cloth lets the fermentation gases out and prevents things such as fruit flies from getting in the jug while the must is fermenting strongly. When the ferment slows down, I'll transfer the liquid to the secondary fermentor and use an airlock on that to keep everything out of the carboy.
For now, all I have to do is wait for the primary ferment to finish, which usually takes a week or so.
Well, that's all I have for this post, I hope you found it interesting!
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