This is a sort of journal for some batches of homebrew, there’s a link on the label to this page hopefully – just in case it turned out to be good and I want to repeat it. Compared to the following batch, leaving the plum skins on during the fermentation made it more difficult to clarify and seems to make it a bit more tart or whatever. I don’t know anything about wine. I was aiming for a bit lower alcohol content, but this yeast definitely will go higher if you give it enough sugar.
Fun fact: the plum on the label was drawn with stable diffusion, that’s why it looks like an ambiguous fruit.
- 8/15
- Started with 26 pounds of golden plums after rinsing, pitting, and squishing
- Added water to reach ~5 gallons
- Gravity was 1.020, added 5.625 pounds of sugar for a starting gravity of 1.060
- Added sodium metabisulfite
- 8/16
- Added yeast nutrient, pectic enzyme, and yeast (Lalvin K1-V1116)
- Fermentation began by the next morning
- 8/20
- Racked, added 1/2 cup sugar and pectic enzyme
- 8/29
- Racked again
- Added sparkolloid to clarify
- 9/16
- Racked yet again
- Added 1/4 tsp metabisulfite and 2-1/2 tsp potassium sorbate to prevent further fermentation
- 9/17
- Added 2 cups sugar to sweeten
- Bottled, ended up with 4.5 gallons total
- Final gravity ~0.998 for around 9% abv