plum cider?

[dave45]

anyone tried it?

Currently I have a glut of victoria plums, and there are only so many you can eat, give away and make jam out of.

With the apple surplus I steam the juice out using a steamer, and when cooled add pectolase and yeast, ferment out and bottle and it makes a pretty good dry cider.

Thinking of using the same process with plums... anyone done anything similar?

[Dave]

No but it sounds delicious. So explain the process of steaming out the juice, could I do this with a wall-paper steamer? Sounds like you are effectively distilling apple juice?

[Odsox]

I don't know how Dave45 does it, but that's how we get juice from blackcurrants and raspberries.
We use a deep saucepan (actually a canner/pressure cooker) with a couple of inches of water in the bottom, then a dish standing on a trivet to catch the juice, followed by the fruit suspended at the top in a muslin bag, then the lid.
You get loads more juice that way, in fact it's amazing just how much juice you get from about an hours steaming.
Much better than mashing and cold dripping

[Dave]

Never heard of doing that before, will have to give it a go if I can dig out the pressure cooker.

[JuzaMum]

Hi Dave45
Is the apple juice good as juice. We don't drink cider (well middle son 17 probably does!) but get through lots of apple juice and have been offered free apples.
Do I just let the juice drip into the water it is above?
JuzaMum

[dave45]

http://www.acceds-cookware.com/Top_Rate ... r_120.html is like mine, only mine is several decades old, aluminium, originally from self-sufficiency and smallholding supplies I think. It was in the garage for 15 years until I thought of using it for apple juice.

Juzamum - yes you can get excellent juice out of any apples and pf course it comes out sterile. I originally tried keeping it in a sanitised screwtop bottle, but it ended up getting mould on top. Not good. So last year I put it in those squarish plastic disposable pint milk bottles and bunged it in the freezer. result. It expands a bit into a block of ice, but is perfect when thawed out. The juice drips into the middle container to which a plastic tube and squeezy clip is attached (I think it was originally rubber).

I like this technique coz its easy and makes frequent use of this old piece of junk at harvest time.

And yes it does produce a lovely amount of juice... fascinating to watch apples at a certain stage in the process turn into a kind of foam with bits of skin floating about in it... I presume this is when the steaming bursts open all the cell walls to release the juice. Takes a few hours for a full load.

I did make homebrew Ribena this way, adding sugar to the result and then bottling. Unfortunately the bottle we gave to the in-laws exploded in their larder embedding glass into the door frame. Wild yeast I guess. Sulphite needed again! I've also fermented the stuff to make blackcurrant wine.. jury is still out on that one.

Dave - can't see how to do it with a wallpaper steamer, and no it isn't distilling. Its just a clever triple saucepan arrangement. The steam from the bottom pan rises up through the middle pan into the fruit basket and the juice runs out of its holes into the middle pan (which is kept at steam temperature more or less so thus pasteurising at least and sterilising probably). I was always concerned that this high temperature would somehow de-nature the flavour but it doesn't seem to. So I keep doing it this way !

And btw the chickens refuse to eat the spent apple mush. but they'll eat the manky bug-ridden applecores and bad bits that I cut out. So the mush goes straight on the compost heap now.

[Pumkinpie]

What I brilliant idea. Must give it ago.

[dave45]

Plum Cider: the results are in.

it was a success. my son actually prefers it over the various apple ciders I made. It even tastes plummy.

So if you have a glut of plums next summer, this is a viable preservation option IMO.

[cideristhefuture]

Sounds like my 'cup o tea'.

p.s I use the freezer.