Plum Mead - Secondary Fermentation

After about five days of bubbling and stirring my mason jars I decided to strain out what was left of the fruit and start secondary fermentation in a one gallon glass carboy. I filtered out most of the larger pieces of fruit by pouring through a cloth jelly strainer. Filling the bottle up to the tapered neck I sealed the top with an air lock and came back one day later to find a bit of a mess...

Gross right? Well I've read that this is quite common and nothing to worry about. I pulled the stopper out, wiped up the gunky mess and cleaned out the air lock. I screwed on the lid and gave the jug a good shake before replacing the air lock. I took a couple of quick videos to show everything happy and bubbling but like an idiot I was holding my phone sideways. I'll need to edit them and rotate before posting but hopefully I can get them up in the next day or two.

Plum Mead - First Attempt - Primary Fermentation

I noticed this week that one of the trees in my back yard is actually a plum tree! So very exciting. Having recently become interested in home brewing and fermenting I thought the best thing to do with this new found treasure was to make a batch of plum mead.

I picked those that looked the most ripe leaving the rest to mature a bit more on the tree. This gave me a few pounds worth of plums to work with. I gave them each a quick rinse and a once over to make sure there were no bugs, worms, or other creepy crawlies hanging about. 

Slicing around the stone I pulled the plums into halves. After removing the stone I cut each half into quarters. I noticed while doing this that quite a few of them, while displaying a beautiful dark purple skin, were in fact quite green on the inside. I'm curious to see how this affects the final product, perhaps less sweet and more tart? I distributed the plum pieces into three wide mouth glass jars. Using a whisk (a potato masher would work as well) I pounded down the fruit while inside the jar to bruise it and release more juice. 

In a separate container I started mixing up my honey solution using 6 parts water to 1 part honey. I also added about a quarter teaspoon of Pectin to help soften up the fruit and quarter teaspoon of yeast nutrient (Fermaid K). Speaking of the yeast, for this batch I used Red Star Cote des Blancs.  After mixing all this together I topped off each of the jars with the liquid leaving enough room to stir. I gave them all a good mix then sealed off the top with canning lid rings and coffee filters. This should keep out anything unwanted while allowing proper ventilation. No exploding jars for me!

OK so the first thing I noticed was that the color you see above is certainly NOT appetizing, however I tried to not let myself get discouraged. I let the jars sit for the day while I went to work, stirring one more time before I left the house. I got back to find that most of the large fruit pieces had begun to release their goodness into the mix and the color had changed to something much more beautiful.

Now this is more like it! The smell coming off this as I stirred it was sweeter and less bitter, also the color of the juice had taken on more of the pigment from the plum skins. A couple more days of this and I will be ready to strain and bottle for secondary fermentation.