This is the fifth year of making plum wine and the third year of selling plums.
So, since last year, I have been researching which steps are really critical, which steps are unnecessary, and which steps can be substituted.
Here are my answer sheets. First, the production steps of plum wine and plum dew
After you receive the plums, try to open them and make them on the same day. In summer, when the temperature is relatively high, leaving it overnight will increase the possibility of bad fruit. If you really don’t have time to make it on the same day, take it out and refrigerate it in a plastic bag for no more than 5 days.
The plums on hand, no matter what they are used for, must be pre-treated in the first step, i.e. selected and washed.
Dali wild plums grow in a wild environment and inevitably have many scratches and spots due to poor management. The key to selection is to distinguish between skin oxidation (usable) and pulp decay (unusable).
To pick a good plum, you need to use a toothpick to pick the stem. Note that there is a small round thin cap at the root of the stem, which should also be removed. If these parts are not removed, they will separate from the plum after soaking for a while and will easily rot and bring a bitter taste. Pay attention to hand cleaning to prevent the plums from being contaminated by sweat and grease.
Place the plums in a clean, oil-free container and soak them in water for 10 minutes to soften the attached soil. It does not need to be washed too hard. Stir gently, wash and remove, then place in an air-drying place to dry.
The air-drying process takes several hours, and the bottom of the container is particularly prone to breakage where the water touches it. It is best to use a hollow container (such as a bamboo dustpan) or place more kitchen paper on the table. You can use fans, blowers and cool air to speed up evaporation. Please do not dry overnight and dry the next day. It can easily crumble.
Also, here’s a new method I highly recommend you use this year: soak them in water, remove them, pour in 35+ degree wine, roll the plums again, remove them again, pour out the wine from the previous step, add new wine, and roll again. You don’t need to dry it anymore. You can just use it.
Boiling water scalding is not recommended for either imported or domestic bottles. Large bottles have a craft defect, and boiling water scalding can easily break them.
It is recommended to handle the glass bottle in advance, rinse with water and dry. Generally speaking, there is a small amount of dust and impurities on the glass bottles, so there is no need to get too tangled up when sterilizing them. If you don’t have time to dry or are still concerned, you can also shake the bottles twice with wine at 35 degrees or higher and then use them directly.
It is very important to be oil-free. It is recommended that you do not use the jars with pickles and oily foods. If you want to use them, wash them several times in advance with a detergent.
Once the preparations are complete, sparkling plum wine is very easy. According to the recipe and formula in the picture above, weigh the required plums, wine and rock sugar (rock sugar can be added later), put them in the jar and wait~
According to some very traditional methods, the steps for making plum wine are
Select – Peel – Soak for n hours – Wash – Salt press for n hours – Wash – Dry for n hours – Prick –
Make wine
This combination is not enough for one day.
Our simplified steps.
Pick – Peel – Wash – Roll wine – Soak wine
Following this procedure, 5 kg of plums can be finished in one hour. All the meaningless steps are eliminated and the finished product is not affected in any way.
As for the exclusive recipe for our invincible and delicious white wine, I wrote a very detailed article about it this year, so I won’t explain it here. If you’d like to see the white wine version, please stamp here.
Despite our deep love of plum wine, plum dew (plum syrup) is actually the most consumed in our house each year. After all, wine doesn’t lend itself to a glass of sweet and sour plum juice at any time of the day? Get up at any time.
In the last tutorial, I also wrote about the practice of room temperature plum dew. This year, I learned the electric rice cooker version and it was great. I may not make a room temperature version in the future, but today I will share both methods.
Using a sealed glass jar, layer the plums, lemon slices and sugar. Shake every other day until the plum juice settles and melts the sugar. Open the jar every two to three days to release the gas produced by the fermentation. After a month, you can drink bubble water.
You can also use crushed icing sugar. Adding lemon adds flavor and acidity on the one hand, and speeds up the melting of sugar and lemon juice on the other.
The ratio of plum: sugar is 1:0.8
I have tried two types of rice cookers, icing sugar and brown sugar.
The finished product of the iced sugar version is very fresh in visual and taste.
The brown sugar version is very mellow and has a more complex and deep flavor. It’s great served with hot water or ice. Personally, I prefer the brown sugar version.
I go up to the mountains every year and stare at the brown sugar. It doesn’t have that weird medicinal taste that brown sugar has on the market. It has the mellow aroma of sugar cane and is especially good for making plums (available at Yunshan Town Shop).
The ratio of plum: brown sugar is 1:0.8
Plum: Brown sugar ratio is 1:1 (brown sugar is slightly less sweet than rock sugar)
(You can use green plums/yellow plums/blush plums)
First, the rice cooker needs to be cleaned carefully, and the inside of the lid needs to be cleaned as well. Do not leave oil stains. It is easy to break when it is covered with oil.
Put the plums and sugar into the rice cooker, turn on the heating device for 15 minutes, then turn to the insulation device and keep it warm for 15-20 hours, then pour it into a glass jar for storage. You can drink it in water on the same day. It can be stored at room temperature for over a year. If you don’t trust it, you can refrigerate it.
Different types of rice cookers keep warm for different periods of time. Some will stay warm all the time, while others will not start keeping warm after a few hours. Therefore, when the warming time reaches seven or eight hours, open and touch the inside of the rice cooker. If it cools down, heat it up for more than 10 minutes and then adjust the warmth.
We highly recommend that you try the rice cooker version and also try icing and brown sugar. It’s amazing and fun.
Whether you make plum wine or plum dew with brown sugar, the liquid surface will melt and create a lot of air bubbles due to the pore structure inside the brown sugar. There is no need to worry about it.
The so-called killing is to remove the bitterness from the food. This bitterness comes from the tannins in the food. There is no point in soaking for a few hours to remove the bitterness because soaking in water does not lose or convert the tannins.
What about killing the salt?
Rubbing with salt will precipitate the juice and kill the green. However, making plum wine and making plum dew is a process that takes time to convert tannins.
Every plum on the mountain is hard to come by. Try to preserve each flavor. Don’t use salt to squeeze the juice out. It’s a waste. Besides, the plums will absorb the taste of the salt. If we don’t get the level right, it can also give our finished product a bad taste.
If the plum wine still has a pronounced bitter taste after a year of soaking, the problem is that the plums soaked in the wine are too low in ripeness and too high in tannins to be transformed after a long soak.
Tannins slowly decrease as the plant grows and ripens, but many stores will bring in too much tannin to minimize shipping losses and ensure that everyone gets to the “plum” because it will be picked too raw.
So, can you better understand why there is now a strong attachment to choosing ripe?
We would rather some customers receive plums yellow, increase losses and compensate more. I would never want to pick fruit that is too raw. I’m glad to receive it. I drank it and did not meet my efforts, expectations and time of the year.
The prickly hole is to speed up the flow of plum juice. When the juice flows quickly, can you drink it quickly? Not really.
The reason our plum wine tastes so good for a year is because of the various ingredients in the plums and the wine
