Prune juice experiment...

Seeing as how this is more "cider-like" than anything else, I posted here.
So I got curious one day & decided to ferment a gallon of prune juice, just to see what would happen. If anyone is interested, this is how it progressed.
I started with Sunsweet brand prune juice, NOT from concentrate, no additives, no preservatives, no added sugar, nothing artificial. The OG: 1.074 and I used a full 5g packet of Lalvin 71-B (narbonne). Other than yeast, I added a pinch each of yeast nutrient, yeast energizer, and D.A.P. Areated well & let the yeast do it's thing under airlock, ambient temp: 70 degrees F. Within a few hours it had a healthy bit of krausen, but mild, nothing explosively vigorous. Within roughly 24 hrs it appeared to be finished fermenting, having left a bit of headspace to begin with (about 8oz worth) I topped up with more juice. In a couple hrs the airlock was bubbling away again. The smell from the airlock at this point was "funky," almost "earthy."
Another 24 hrs & the fermentation has slowed to almost zero, I could still see some tiny bubbles rising to the surface. At this point I got extremely busy with work & didn't rack it off the lees till 17 days later. At that point I thought it was done fermenting. SG: 1.025 for an ABV of 6.66%
Of course I tasted the sample, the following is verbatim from my fermentation log entry: "The 1st thing that came to mind was 'tart.' I wasn't expecting that much tartness. Sort of an odd flavour, there's the fermented plum under, tart dominates; and just a suggestion of a sort of (for lack of a better term) 'cinnamon-ish' something. Like the aftertase of cheap cherry flavoured hard candy. Considering it's 19 days old & prune juice, not too bad; still dark & opaque, about the color of a hershey bar. I expected a little more alcohol though, maybe the last 3% will ferment in time, but I doubt it'll ever get past 7% ABV without added sugar. No legs to speak of, but after breathing in the glass, I could detect a kind of 'bubblegum' smell, not strong, but certainly noticable. This has turned out more 'plummy' than 'pruney' & that's surprising. The prune juice flavour is mostly in the background. I might be able to work with this; a little added sugar, maybe a pinch of tannin. It definately needs more research."
So that's where it stands at the moment, I'll update as I test, taste & experiment more with it. Regards, GF.

I have a Grandfather that might adopt you if this is drinkable. He gets his prunes and alcohol??? you could be the son he never had.

If I had to name one thing I would NEVER try and ferment, Prune Juice just might be it

Oh man... I could see getting really hammered on that, passing out and totally sharting in my sleep...

I've fermented prune juice with both ale and champagne yeast. There didn't seem to be much difference in the final products. They both made fizzy foamy prune juice. Theyboth tasted like prune juice but with some of the sugar removed. The prune juice must contain some unfermatable sugar (sorbitol maybe?) because it still had sweetness when it finished fermenting. It also had a lot of body (thick, actually) from ground up fruit pulp.

I would like to do it again but with some hops added to off-set the sweetness. Spiced prune "beer" might be worth a try also.

ChshreCat said:

Oh man... I could see getting really hammered on that, passing out and totally sharting in my sleep...

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I hadn't thought of that. ROFL!

I don't even want to imagine being druck and trying to hold back the prune ****z. During hazing for a frat which I am no longer affiliated with we had to drink a half gallon of prune juice. That was a horrible experience. Walking around the woods and leaning up on trees to blast prune juice out my ass like a freaking firehose. OMG that plus alcohol would be hell.

I just racked the experimental prune juice fermentation for the 3rd time. This stuff smells great, exactly like those spiced plums in a can, but it's so tart, it makes the hair stand up on my arms! Without either initial dilution with water, or some serious backsweetening, this is simply way too tart to be drinkable.

Now an interesting thing started happening with this stuff. It's been opaque & brown from the start, it went from dark brown, to the color of milk chocolate, to the color of a hershey bar. But now the top 2 inches or so is even darker, almost black. I'm guessing that this is due to the dietary fiber dropping out of suspension. I'll let this stuff sit & see if it ever starts to clear just out of curiosity, but I have a sneaking suspicion that even with dilution & back sweetening it'll still taste like prune juice; I'd be better off mixing regular, unfermented prune juice with vodka. Hey, it's an experiment.

Sounds like you made plum jerkum.

From the wikipedia: plum jerkum, made from fermented plums, traditional of Warwickshire in the English Midlands. It is said that it "left the head clear while paralysing the legs". The Warwickshire Drooper plum from which it is traditionally brewed is now uncommon, which explains the rarity of the drink.

I would actually like to try making some of this.

Edited to add: Okay, I see that prune "juice" is actually just softened, pureed prunes. Not exactly plum juice. I don't think you are going to have much luck getting that to clear any time in this decade.

I wonder if the plums are pressed before fermenting or fermented on skins then pressed as in red wine. Fully ripe, soft plums could probably be pressed whole in a basket or cider press, but I have no idea what the analysis of the juice would be in terms of SG, pH etc. I was thinking of pressing plums mixed with apple and pear pomace, I think this would help clear the juice and stop the fruit from forming a soggy mess. My plums won't be ripe until next january so in the northern hemisphere you will be able to try much sooner.

Hi there,
you might be interested in this old Warwickshire recipe for plum cider made from Warwickshire Drooper plums to work on
CHARLEY STANLEY'S PLUM JERCUM
"This be a very auld resippee. Charley bein' a well known chap from Bretforton, which be a village 4 miles from Asum. You can make it in small lots to be put in bottulls or in big uns to be put in borrulls, like some peepul round ear do. Wether it be in bottulls or borrulls it be sum jolly good tak and as bin nown to put some folk on thur backs and to leave um feelin far from well nex mornin.
Thee wants 3lb plums, 3lb shuggur and 6 pints watter. First of all boil the plums in a cottun or muslin bag in the six pints of watter. Boil the plums until um be tendur, then squeeze all the joose out into the lickwid left in the pan. Add the shuggur when lookwarm and stur until it be all gon. Then put the lickwid into a gallon demijar and top up with watter until thur be a fur inch space at the top. This ull allow it room to work. Mak surton thee hast an airlock in the cork. Leave fur a cuppell of wicks after it ave finished bubblin to allow the segments to settul. Then syfun it off into your bottulls. It be best left fur at least 2 munths befor thee trys it."
N.B. Jerkum means 'jerk them' either up or down!
Those of you with some brewing knowledge will spot the flaw in this recipe - boiling the fruit will kill off any natural yeast. There are, therefore, two options. The first is to extract the juice by other methods and hope there is a natural yeast to start the fermentation. The second is to add a yeast. The drink has been successfully made over the last few years following this recipe and by adding a yeast (brewers and wine yeasts have both been tried). We feel that originally a yellow plum would have been used so that the drink looked more like cider, but a pink cider is also very palatable.
CECIL BLOXHAM'S RECEIPT FOR PLUM JERKUM
I bumped into Ceceil Bloxham, one of Harbury's great characters. I asked him about his recipe for Plum Jerkum and, after about 10 minutes background story, he got to the point! To call it a recipe is misleading but you would have enjoyed hearing him describe it. He learnt the method from an Evesham man who came to live in Harbury temporarily in the 1930's. Basically all he told me was
"Collect rain water in a barrel and leave some plums in the barrel for a few weeks. They should start to ferment on their own, he said. Then strain the mixture through muslin into a container with an airlock and start adding brown sugar, little by little. The'knack', as he desvribed it, was knowing how much sugar to add and when to bottle it. And that's about as precise as he got, apart from leaving it for at least 6 months before drinking it (when it should taste like 'velvet' he said)." Basically, he emphasised soft water, brown sugar and not adding all the sugar in one go.

My grandmother has an Italian Prune Tree. My husband didn't believe me because everyone knows that prunes are dried plums. I was able to prove such a tree exists, but I can't really say what the difference is. Even a quick look at Wikipedia says, "Dried plums are also known simply as prunes, as if 'prune' signified merely a dried plum - however, prunes are a distinct type of plum, and may have predated the fruits that we know more commonly as plums." Yeah, that isn't any help. Point to all this is, there is a good possibility that Sunsweet is not starting to dry the plums to make prunes to somehow squeeze juice of of them, or even rehydrate. They could very well be starting with a plum like prune. Further "proof"? http://askville.amazon.com/prune-juice-called-plum/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=1541911

Slowfoodwarks: Thanks for the input, I'm not exactly sure what "drooper" plums are, but odds are I won't be able to find them here in the US.

Candlewineproject: As far as I know, most, if not all prunes sold in the US are dried (though not totally), pitted Italian plums. The Italian variety is used due to the the fruit being a "freestone" type. If you've ever pitted plums, you can certainly understand why a plum that has a stone that comes free of the flesh so easily would be desireable.

As for an update: I had a look, but not a taste, at the prune juice experiment last weekend. The black at the top has grown just a wee bit, but other than that, no visible changes. I'm contemplating an addition of calcium carbonate and/or potassium bicarb to reduce the acid in it. I'll have to swing by the LHBS this week & pick some up. I'll post a proper update after the addition(s). Regards, GF.

CandleWineProject said:

My grandmother has an Italian Prune Tree. My husband didn't believe me because everyone knows that prunes are dried plums. I was able to prove such a tree exists, but I can't really say what the difference is.

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Prune plums are the freestone types of plums. They come free of the pit, making them suitable for drying. Ordinary plums do not, and would make a mighty mess were you to try to cut them off of their pits.

Maybe some type of finings to knock out the solids? Sparkalloid or Super-Kleer might do it.

--Klingons regard prune juice as "a warrior's drink," Lieutenant Worf having been introduced to it by Guinan while on board the USS Enterprise. Heaven only knows what would happen to interstellar diplomacy if they find out it can be fermented

You might try Wine Conditioner to backsweeten it, to see if that will help offset the tartness.

It's been nearly a year since my last update on the prune juice experiment, so I had a wee taste of the stuff & discovered something: Almost ALL of that hair raising tartness has aged out. Now I find this fact encouraging & certainly a useful bit of info for use on other fermentations.

There is still a crtain "funkiness" or maybe a sort of "earthiness" to it; not earthy like a beet, but an odd sort of flavour, tough to put into words. There is still the taste of prune juice running through it, but there is also a weird hint of spice, like the spice in those spiced plums from a can, but there was NO spice in this fermentation. At 1 point during fermentation, there was actually a spiced plum flavour that was rather pronounced, but this has faded.

It's still a very dark brown, almost black in color, a flashlight still won't shine thru the stuff in a 1 gallon jug. While the taste isn't exactly bad, it's weird enough so that I seriously doubt that anyone would actually enjoy it.

I honestly don't think I can even cook with it or mix it with anything to make more palatable. I've fermented plums & had some good results, but after being made into prunes, they're pretty much a lost cause to make anything fermented from the juice.
As I stated in a previous update, it would be better to mix the unfermented prune juice with vodka than to ferment it.

Well, at least I learned a couple of things during the experiment & I'm only out the price of a gallon of prune juice & a packet of dry wine yeast.
Regards, GF.

This has been an awesome thread, thanks so much for coming back to it.

...Sounds like you've indeed brewed some dark stuff. Perhaps the only step left is to distill it into prune brandy!

In searching the forums I found this OLD post and figured i'd share my little experiment... First I started with brewing a batch of saison. then after 10 days in primary i cold steeped some debittered Black malt and added 12 chopped dried plums and boiled the concoction...
I cooled this and tossed it and a 64oz bottle of prune juice in a carboy and racked my saison on top of it... Looks black as oil and still very light in texture and flavor. We'll see how the juice plums and brett play together.

gratus fermentatio said:

It's been nearly a year since my last update on the prune juice experiment, so I had a wee taste of the stuff & discovered something: Almost ALL of that hair raising tartness has aged out. Now I find this fact encouraging & certainly a useful bit of info for use on other fermentations.

There is still a crtain "funkiness" or maybe a sort of "earthiness" to it; not earthy like a beet, but an odd sort of flavour, tough to put into words. There is still the taste of prune juice running through it, but there is also a weird hint of spice, like the spice in those spiced plums from a can, but there was NO spice in this fermentation. At 1 point during fermentation, there was actually a spiced plum flavour that was rather pronounced, but this has faded.

It's still a very dark brown, almost black in color, a flashlight still won't shine thru the stuff in a 1 gallon jug. While the taste isn't exactly bad, it's weird enough so that I seriously doubt that anyone would actually enjoy it.

I honestly don't think I can even cook with it or mix it with anything to make more palatable. I've fermented plums & had some good results, but after being made into prunes, they're pretty much a lost cause to make anything fermented from the juice.
As I stated in a previous update, it would be better to mix the unfermented prune juice with vodka than to ferment it.

Well, at least I learned a couple of things during the experiment & I'm only out the price of a gallon of prune juice & a packet of dry wine yeast.
Regards, GF.

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What if you mixed it in with some more cider that you may be racking? Maybe even a little could go a long way I've done something similar with some older tart stuff that mixed in nicely with some of my sweeter stuff. Take that "prune cider into the lab".