Options with Plum Cider

[Rianon]

Hi all

I recently made a large batch (roughly 23 litres) of lovely Plum cider. It's been about 3 weeks, and I still have 12 litres left. My recent distilling experiments is making me itchy to take the rest of the cider and do a run.

So 2 questions:

1. It's currently stable at 10% (Baker's yeast), but still quite sweet. Any issues to be concerned about? Do I water it down and add a bit more yeast? Or just run it as is?

2. I picked up somewhere in a thread that high pectin washes produce more methanol. To be fair, it's only 50% plum with pineapple, berries, and some grapes. Any thoughts on quantifying the foreshots? We generally are quite liberal with tossing foreshots, so I'm not too worried, and we make several cuts during the spirit run.

I'm open to any suggestions and ideas...

[NZChris]

Cider is made from apples.

You don't give enough info about your ferment for me to have a guess at much, but if it's sweet, it's not ready to distil. I'd hazard a wild guess that you have used too much sugar and you might have to water it down to where it should have been in the first place.

[Rianon]

Cider is made from apples.

You don't give enough info about your ferment for me to have a guess at much, but if it's sweet, it's not ready to distil. I'd hazard a wild guess that you have used too much sugar and you might have to water it down to where it should have been in the first place.

I did a ferment of the fruit with baker's yeast, sugar and water. Start SG of 1.080, current SG of 1.005. You're right, I definitely added too much sugar. The sweetness works fine if you're only after the fruity fermented drink.

I'm only calling it cider because I heard somebody else ( on a different platform) get an earful after calling Pineapple beer "beer" when apparently you can only call it beer if it contains hopps.

[NZChris]

1.080 should ferment to completion without any trouble as long as pH and temperature aren't a problem. Plums should provide enough nutrients.

If you are in a hurry, run it. Otherwise, wait a few days for it to get below 1.000

[Bushman]

Not sure are you just fermenting the juice or are you also adding the pomace? If you are using the pomace you will need to punch the cap frequently during fermentation.

[Corsaire]

I'm only calling it cider because I heard somebody else ( on a different platform) get an earful after calling Pineapple beer "beer" when apparently you can only call it beer if it contains hopps.

I don't have experience with fruit washes.
But whoever said that beer has to have hops in it needs to sit down with a glass of Gruut (I think gruit in English?) and seriously reconsider their stance.

What temps do you ferment at? Baker's yeast works best at higher temps. Where I'm at it doesn't like to work in an uninsulated shed most time of the year.