Need plum recipe help ?

Information about fruit/vegetable type washes.

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paradactal
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Need plum recipe help ?

Post by paradactal »

So I just got about 25lbs of plums (pit in). I want to make a brandy. Any suggestions?? I would like to use as little sugar as possible. It will be run in a 8g pot still. Need some help with a recipe. I normally just do a corn whiskey. This will be my first fruit wash. Any ideas??
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Re: Need plum recipe help

Post by Schmicter »

Check out Jack Keller web site. At the bottom of his home page there is a "search this site" button for just about any fruit.
Here are 3 recipes.
http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/plums.asp" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
For a mash/must to distill you can do without the tannin, the pectic enzyme will help it clear but not necessary, the bisulfite or Campden tablets not necessary. Bakers yeast will be fine. For acid blend just squeeze a lemon per gallon into it.
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Re: Need plum recipe help

Post by Bushman »

All 3 of those recipes in the link above call for sugar. Here is some info I took from the parent site.
Another tip - if you rough chop the fruit and freeze it and then allow it to thaw, it gives up its juice with much less effort, the technique works with most fruit and doesn't affect the flavour

Regarding slivovitz, Wal writes ..
Traditionally in the Balkans and Eastern Europe plum brandy (similar to apple cider) is made from the pure fruit only, with no sugar or water added. Relying on wild yeasts, it ferments naturally for 5 weeks. Alcohol content would be about 5%a.b.v. It is double distilled to 70%a.b.v. For this method you need lots of plums. I drank kosher Passover sliwowica (70%a.b.v.) in Poland and it tasted great. Had an amber tinge. Drank plum brandy from yellow Mirabelle plums in France and this tasted a bit mellower than from black prunes. This was a white distillate of 50%a.b.v. In the Balkans they steep whole plums or dried plums in the final distillate to increase the plum flavor and to give a bit of color.
I have not done plum but would guess it is very similar to apple cider which I did last year. Mine without sugar fermented out just over 6%. I like the natural flavor without sugar personally.
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Re: Need plum recipe help

Post by thecroweater »

Here's a good thread I used as a guide for my last effort
http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 38&t=30692
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Re: Need plum recipe help

Post by Ayay »

I did a plum run long ago. As I remember, plums have enough sugar to get 5%ABV. Add sugar to bring it up to 10%ABV and ferment with dry active bakers yeast. Best of both worlds pot stilled with great flavour and nice toxic effect in the hearts.
Half the alc is in the mush no matter how long it's settled. Really need to still on the mush one way or another.
cornflakes...stripped and refluxed
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Re: Need plum recipe help

Post by thecroweater »

hmm not a fan of bakers yeast in fruit washes never had a really good result from using that with any fruit
Ok here is my method copied and pasted from elsewhere

Plum Brandy
Plum brandy is known by many names, the most common being Slivovich or slivowitz and there are many methods to make it
When fermenting fruit the general rule of thumb is not to exceed a ratio of 1 part fruit to one part sugar to 5 parts water and this will produce a spirit that will taste virtually the same as a wash with no sugar (purists will argue that point) . I've done Sliv with no sugar and with abou 2:1 ratio and couldn't differentiate between the final product, only to greatly reduced yield. Generally I use 2 kg of fruit to 1 kg of sugar to 5 ltrs of water but not everyone can get a lot of fruit free so the method I will write up is using the maximum rule of thumb ratio based on a 25 ltr wash
Yeast
fresh plums have a white power coating the outside of the skin, this is yeast and you can use it to ferment with. The thing is the type of yeast will vary from tree to tree and district to district so the attributes of your wild yeast until you use it are unknown. to guarantee a good fast ferment I would recommend a white wine yeast . If they are bought polished plums you will need to add yeast for certain and never use a bread yeast when dealing with fruit . The final product will be awful
Plum Brandy
5 kg's of plums
5 kg's of white sugar
20 ltrs of warm water (around 30' centigrade)
20 to 30 grams of wine yeast
Hydrating the yeast
have about 500ml of warm water at around 30" Centigrade and I dissolve a tbl spoon of sugar in it (but that's not imperative) and then add the yeast
Method
dissolve the sugar into 10 or so ltrs of water, a paint or plaster mixer on a drill works well for this
Mash the plums, this works best if the plums have been picked a few days before and allowed to deteriorate a bit. Place the plums in a bucket and mash them, I use a plaster mixer on a drill . when they are fairly well mashed add some of the sugar water and remix/mash the plum pulp then tip into your fermenter, pulp stones and all.
Top the fermenter up with the remainder of the sugar water and warm or cool water so that it is around 27 to 32' when full (leave 70 to 100mm head space, 150mm for bigger ferments) . stir in your hydrated yeast and that's the wash started.
Racking your plum wash
Now the fun begins. This stuff has a fair bit of sediment and I like to milk all the wash I can out as there are some nice flavors in that mush down the bottom . make sure the ferment has finished, some times fruit washes can stall due to a low pH level (too much below say 4 may need adjusting)and an alkaline may need to be added to keep the yeast healthy (I use hydrated lime) . I also wait for most of the cap to sink but that may not be necessary.
Bail or siphon the top wine off until you get down to the sediment. there are several ways to deal with this crap and this is how I do it. I scoop a small bucket out and tip it on a flyscreen placed over a bucket until it gets too thick for that method and then I put it in a towel and wring the towel out . the resulting wash is pretty sludgy but with a good rolling boil you shouldn't get any issues with scorching, I never have
Make sure you do good cuts with fruit brandy, fruit contains pectin and the yeast will turn that pectin into methanol. The methanol will fraction off in your head cuts, you can blend some tails in to add a complexity to the spirit but don't bother blending in any heads
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paradactal
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Re: Need plum recipe help

Post by paradactal »

Wow , a lot of great answers! I will start sifting through these ideas and posring results. Thank you guys!! :thumbup: :thumbup:
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Re: Need plum recipe help

Post by der wo »

The traditional recipe is, to squish plums, ferment it and distill it. No water. Ripe plums get very liquid by squishing. If you add sugar, it gets even more liquid while fermentation. Some remove the stones, some not, some only a part of the stones. With plums you get about 9% abv.
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Re: Need plum recipe help

Post by thecroweater »

yes but this makes for a very thick ferment and a lot of fruit is needed, some water will make life easier and will make a very minimal difference once distilled, I've varied the amount of water and haven't found any significant difference within these parameters
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Re: Need plum recipe help

Post by jb-texshine »

Mash plums,remove seeds if desired,add some water if desired,add ec1118 yeast, ferment,strain and squeeze and distill.
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der wo
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Re: Need plum recipe help

Post by der wo »

Interesting opinion. And new for me. I always went the hard way with no or little water. But (as you know) I cheat with sugar... And I don't rack off (only the yeast sediment).
But yes of course, it gets easier and cheaper this way. Perhaps I sould not be too conservative here for my next thick mash.
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Re: Need plum recipe help

Post by thecroweater »

I don't think i mentioned that I always quite deliberately ferment on the seed but never still on them. The kernel of a plum seed contains cyanide which apart for being pretty bad for you is also bitter. breaking seeds should be avoided and boiling them would be to invite an unnecessary risk the way I see it :thumbup:
@ der wo yes do try it and with the sugar added I will be you will notice little difference (seems to smell slightly different more than taste) :? I do rack it put I press it to waste almost no liquid as the best flavours are in the sludgy marc :thumbup:
Edit oh yeah to be fair, i do run it through a plated column these days but nothing much has changed since my pot days except I no longer strip
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Re: Need plum recipe help

Post by der wo »

Distilling with the stones has another negative side effect: The different spirits taste more similar. If you have a few bottles of homemade brandy with the bitter almond taste, it's fine. But if any of your stone-fruit spirits has this flavour, it's boring.

I distill fruit with a LM. No stripping.
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Re: Need plum recipe help

Post by kiwi Bruce »

Slivowitz was the first spirit I ever learned to distill. We lived on the Hauraki Plans in NZ. One of our neighbours was a Yugoslavian who was taken POW ( in German uniform) and opted to stay in NZ after the war. He came up to my parents store one Saturday afternoon and in casual conversation asked if I would like to see his still running. HELL'S YES! So I helped him for the next few hours, and he gave me a pint jar of Slivowitz for "my Dad" like that happened. Anyway I helped him out each time he stilled, which was about every six weeks. Very good drink, Yugoslavian's national drink.
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Re: Need plum recipe help

Post by thecroweater »

Ok so just strained and charged the boiler for the last run (chutney run) . What an ordeal but the flavours from the marc are to die for, way to good to toss. I'll post some pictures of the process, i strain with a pot plant tray that will set you back about $3
Attachments
This years straining method
This years straining method
Suzie helping press the marc
Suzie helping press the marc
Compressed marc
Compressed marc
Seeds from the very bottom lees bed
Seeds from the very bottom lees bed
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Re: Need plum recipe help

Post by thecroweater »

And the yield :mrgreen:
Lids are just sat on loose for airing
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Re: Need plum recipe help

Post by thecroweater »

Chutney run of last seasons plums, didn't seem to scorch, it had tons of flavour and aroma and nearly double the average yield. Was a darn long slow run but the most important one. Its been a 700+ litre marathon that has taken something like 6 or 8 months of "spare" time to run but if you ask me, the longer it sits on the marc the better it is.
I did this 220 ltr independent of the rest as these were red flesh plums and the first lot were yellow. The sliv is slightly different but similar enough for me to include the faints from the yellow flesh chutney run, that is a run of the combined marc once its been strained somewhat as the photos above depict
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Re: Need plum recipe help ?

Post by thecroweater »

An update on this, I blend the very lightly soaked yellow plum brandy with the heavily steeped plum wood red plum brandy to get a libation that is really interesting and easy to drink . I've had rave reviews by all that have tried it :thumbup:
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Re: What'd ya'll make today?

Post by thecroweater »

Pressed plum Marc, red plums were dandy fine but the yellow plums were the devils work. It weren't Marc but sludge, if any of ya worked sulfur tents you'll know what I mean when I say slab pulp. If ya haven't well its like baby shit (the bad kind) . I got about 50 litres out and then put the seed in the bottom of an old laundry trough and dumped the once pressed Marc/pulp/sludge/mushy crap on top. I reckon near 5 more litres has dripped out. This is going to be a real chutney run for sure and I will have to give it a good stir before firing it. Long as ya can keep the fines in suspension til the boil rolls ya don't get scorching and these chutney runs yield the best flavour and higher volume/proof. If it weren't the best of the best I'd kick the darn barrels over as its ten times the work of wine and then some.
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Re: Need plum recipe help ?

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I think some day soon I should post a stand alone thread on my various methods with the varying results as I have all my plum experiments research and results spread out all over the place. Gawd sakes it took me ages to find this thread (that has now been moved to where it belongs) and other information I posted is scattered amongst maybe a dozen other threads. Anyway back on subject : so I have around 55 to 56 litres (close to 15 gal) of pretty soupy plum wine and feints. The feints comprise of say 3.5 litres (there abouts) , it has a really robust plum smell and almost over powering taste that is common with these Marc pressing runs. It also smells very winey or alcoholic so I'm expecting a higher yield than the wines produced. This is the pressings from one 75 ltr red plums and a 200 ltr yellow plums ferment on natural wild yeast with no sugar added to one and very little to the other just as a start up. They are going to be ran through a 5 plate column consisting of 4 bubble plates and one base perf plate. Most of my run this year has really struggled to pull off above 88% abv which is 2% lower than this configuration normally gets but this is die to a lower yield/ FG . I'll check the average before blending but I expect its around 87 or just very slightly under ( 86.8 or .9). I'm thinking this run will pull centre hearts at 90% and average maybe 89% but we'll see.
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Re: Need plum recipe help ?

Post by Shine0n »

My plums I did last year, I fermented and distilled on the pulp.
All stones were removed except a few that I couldn't retrieve for fermenting but none made it to the boiler.

Simple pot still with thumper and worm, clear in the boiler and muck in the thumper minus the yeasty mess at the bottom.
Hearts were 145-150, I kept a little late heads for the blending and used the sweet water from very very late tails to cut to aging proof.
I was disappointed in the final spirit at first just because I didn't know any better but now at 18 months it's the smoothest drink I have. It's almost like drinking slightly plum flavored water at 85 proof but watch out... the effects are real!!!

This year was bad for plums in my area so I didn't get a chance to go again this year so hopefully next year will be overflowing with them.

I may give your approach a go next time as I would like to see the differences.

Good write up and I'm glad to see this thread still hanging around and you updating it.

Thanks, Shine0n
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Re: Need plum recipe help ?

Post by Pikey »

To return to the original question, You have 25 lb plums and want to make 8 gallons - so that's 3 lb per gallon, that's fine.

Looking at those Jack Keller recipes, the only one suitable for distilling is number 1. The others have too much sugar for normal yeasts and would make sweet or slightly sweet wines in a US gallon. They would also keep fermenting for a long time, with only small increase in abv.

S0 it's 25 lb plums, 16 lb sugar (14 might be better) and a little citric acid or lemon juice. I'd stick a little nutrien in there too - though it's probably not needed. :)
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Re: Need plum recipe help ?

Post by thecroweater »

actually your assumption is dead wrong, all three of those recipes will simply make different products simple as that.
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Re: Need plum recipe help ?

Post by UrToopid »

Damn 23 comments here and I still can't taste it...I watched a video someone posted about two years ago on how to make all natural slivovich. And it makes my mouth water but I have not yet tasted it. We don't get too many plum orchards here in south Texas. At $3 per pound, it's just not in my budget yet.
I wonder if they sell it at Spec's?


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Re: Need plum recipe help ?

Post by papstoker »

Thanks for a great thread. I've got a question about Slivovich. I did some googling and it seems there are 2 ways to make it. The first being the distillation of plums. The alternate method seems to simply be macerating plums in Vodka, or neutral, is the way to make sliv. That cant be right? Wouldnt these 2 approaches yei yield vastly different drinks?
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Re: Need plum recipe help ?

Post by Pikey »

Yes - they would. One would be a "brandyish" or "Eau de vie" - the other a "liqueur" the eau de vie would have the more complexity, the liqueur probably taste more of plums.

However, you don't get away that easily - here's a thread which is absolutely essential to read before doing anything else - bear in mind there are other names for Slivovitz :wink:

http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 38&t=48526
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Re: Need plum recipe help ?

Post by monty00 »

Hello all, I’m after a bit of help.
Its took me 6month, reading and with some expert tuition, to finally make some lovely neutral spirit and then add my gin botanicals, prior to the final spirit run, and get some wicked gin.
I’ve also got some plumb trees in the back garden......question is...drum roll...
If after I’ve fermented the plumb, done a stripping run and then a first spirit run, can I still add my gin botanicals to the plumb spirit or not?
I just want to start using the fruits that are available wild and free to flavour my gins, any help at all will be amazing, thanks in advance, Monty.
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Re: Need plum recipe help ?

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monty00 wrote:Hello all, I’m after a bit of help.
Its took me 6month, reading and with some expert tuition, to finally make some lovely neutral spirit and then add my gin botanicals, prior to the final spirit run, and get some wicked gin.
I’ve also got some plumb trees in the back garden......question is...drum roll...
If after I’ve fermented the plumb, done a stripping run and then a first spirit run, can I still add my gin botanicals to the plumb spirit or not?
I just want to start using the fruits that are available wild and free to flavour my gins, any help at all will be amazing, thanks in advance, Monty.
OH NO... DONT DO THAT!! :esurprised:

Although yes you can, Sljivovica is Europe's version of Rum, it is laborious to make and achieve that unique flavour.
It should only be double pot distilled, first being the stripping run.

Plumbs are very fibrous and messy, use one of the simple sugar grain or bran washes to make your neutral for gin.

use over ripened plums and Crush or score them before putting them in to ferment.
You need to push or fold in the dry floating plumbs every day.
Towrds the end of the ferment, the plumbs should be a gooey mash at this point, use a drill with paint stirrer to mix the mash, then let it sit for 1-2 days.
Almost all the pips will be at the bottom of the drum.
Be ready to distill ASAP, dont let it sit or you will end up with plum cider vinigar very quickly.
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Re: Need plum recipe help ?

Post by NZChris »

monty00 wrote:If after I’ve fermented the plumb, done a stripping run and then a first spirit run, can I still add my gin botanicals to the plumb spirit or not?
Yes.

If the plum flavor is too intense for your liking, blend it with some neutral before the gin runs.
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Re: Need plum recipe help ?

Post by decoy »

monty00 wrote:Hello all, I’m after a bit of help.
Its took me 6month, reading and with some expert tuition, to finally make some lovely neutral spirit and then add my gin botanicals, prior to the final spirit run, and get some wicked gin.
I’ve also got some plumb trees in the back garden......question is...drum roll...
If after I’ve fermented the plumb, done a stripping run and then a first spirit run, can I still add my gin botanicals to the plumb spirit or not?
I just want to start using the fruits that are available wild and free to flavour my gins, any help at all will be amazing, thanks in advance, Monty.
Hey Monty
Just found out there is a gin made from Plums or a close relative.
Its called Sloe Gin or you can try Slow Gin.
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