So once upon a time, I had this idea of making plum wine. So I looked up how you make plum wine, and found out that it was sadly pretty boring. Umeshu is its proper name, and it isn’t wine at all, but fruit in distilled liquor. So if one had access to ume, one could make shochu, and steep the ume in it until they shrivel. Problem one, ume are notoriously hard to find in the US. Problem two, making shochu involves distillation, and doing that right is both expensive and slightly dangerous. So what most people do if they want to make their own plum wine is buy ume extract in a bottle, buy a bottle of shochu, mix, and done. Needless to say that didn’t sound like a lot of fun.
The idea of essentially ume infused simple syrup in a bottle however intrigued me, and I pondered what else one might make with it. Thus two things were born, Aki Ume(Fall Plum) which is a plum flavored sake and Ume Cider, hard apple cider with ume syrup as the backsweetener. Both came out very tasty! The cider however is going to need buy in for the next time, the ume syrup for it ended up costing about $90 for an end result of two cases. Ouch.
Same starting recipe as Hatsuyuki, one quarter of the recipe measurements. Moto started with
Later that night, added 3/8 cup steamed rice. After 10 days, bulked up the lees
At 39 days, fermentation was complete. Sake was racked off the sediment. Ratio of sake to ume extract was determined, to me the optimal mix was 3 parts sake to 1 part ume extract. Added ume extract and 1/2 tsp of benonite in 1/2 cup water to clarify. A week later a second racking was done, and the sake/ume balance checked. Tasted good, so a second round of bentonite, as it was still very cloudy. A week after that, final bottling was done, and bottles pasteurized. End result was a volume of four bottles.
The base cider recipe came from Homebrew Talk, it is called Southern Sweet and I simply swapped out ume extract as the backsweetener.
Honey and molasses were dissolved in a half gallon of the apple juice. Rest of the juice went into the brew bucket with 2 tsp pectin and mixed well. When the honey mixture was cool, that was added to the bucket and stirred, then added one pack of Lalvin D47 yeast. Mixed well, and let sit at room temperature, 78 degrees, for one week, mostly because the temp controlled fridge was full of Aki Ume.
When the Aki Ume was finished fermenting a week later, stashed the cider in the fridge at 70 degrees. Taste test proved to have a very tart flavor so it gets another week. Second taste test in another week was good, so it was racked into the bottling bucket. Determined a good cider to ume ratio, which ended up being 5 bottles of ume syrup. Cider was bottled, and left for two days until the pressure test plastic bottle was firm, and then pasteurized.
What do you think?