Absurd persimmon project

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this is amazing. I had always wanted to do something with persimons and this is sweet to watch. Any chance you took any type of gravity readings or brix measurments? Id be curious to know how much alcohol is in this considering you started with a fairly high concentration of sugars. Keep posting!!!!
 
Here is a picture of what things look like after settling a bit. You can see that it is clearing nicely.

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Any chance you took any type of gravity readings or brix measurments? Id be curious to know how much alcohol is in this considering you started with a fairly high concentration of sugars. Keep posting!!!!

Not yet, but fear not, we will be!
 
Last season I did the same thing with about 75 lbs of persimmons from the inlaws trees. They have the monster huge persimmons, dont remember the type.

I did things a bit differently:

1. Picked all the persimmons
2. Cut out all the stems
3. Used a juicer to get as much juice as possible and get rid of the rinds
4. Added 10 lbs of clover honey per 5 gallons.


From 75 lbs of fruit I got about 8 gallons of juice with the nasty pulp.

Tossed it on a mead yeast.

It took me a few weeks to get the pulp to seperate from the juice and be able to rack to secondary. After a few more weeks of this, I racked again, and then again a few times, until I was able to get clear and beautiful juice.

All this went into texas corn whiskey barrels for a month of aging, and since the last few months has been sitting in bottles and aging!

The taste is still a bit alcoholy, but If anyone in the area (San Jose, ca) want to try what this came out to, drop me a note and we can meet for a bottle opening.

So far everyone loves it, I think it needs to age more, but Im submitting a bottle for competion this week!

Cheers

Lucas
 
A long overdue update. Everything has been racked and looks like this:
IMG_11231.JPG


IMG_11491.JPG


The bad news is that there is a certain funky flavor. Not something I really want to drink as is, which is really too bad because we have on the order of 40 gallons of the stuff. We may try to make vinegar or see about distillation.
 
The weird off flavor that you talk about happened to me as well. Sit on it for a while and it will go away, at least it did for me. With time the persimmon and honey flavor started coming through!

Cheers
 
The weird off flavor that you talk about happened to me as well. Sit on it for a while and it will go away, at least it did for me. With time the persimmon and honey flavor started coming through!


IIRC this was no-honey involved. I have some persimmon mead going I've yet to really taste, but this looks like pure persimmon wine. I have a feeling it will be very tannin-heavy since the skins of persimmons are high in tannins and they were left in with this project. Still hoping it ages out and is at least consumable!
 
A long overdue update. Everything has been racked and looks like this:
IMG_11231.JPG


IMG_11491.JPG


The bad news is that there is a certain funky flavor. Not something I really want to drink as is, which is really too bad because we have on the order of 40 gallons of the stuff. We may try to make vinegar or see about distillation.

We dont talk about distillation, since it is illegal in the good 'ol US of A!
 
have faith. i keep wines around for years and they deffinitly change in flavor. Stock it away and save for later. :)
 
Curious how this stuff is coming along -- I may have a lead on a pile of persimmons this year as they drop off the tree in a month or two.....

Is the flavor starting to mellow out a bit?

Thanks

John
 
Curious how this stuff is coming along -- I may have a lead on a pile of persimmons this year as they drop off the tree in a month or two.....

Is the flavor starting to mellow out a bit?

Thanks

John

Nope. Still nasty. although I've come to believe that it is as a result of a couple infections.

I'd say go for it, just be careful with sanitation.

Whhat kind of persimmons?
 
great thread! I'm working up a couple small persimmon beer/wine batches at the moment. One will be with the american native persimmons, and another with the fuyus.

The inability to get a gravity reading is a bummer. I had the same problem with a batch of banana beer i did earlier in the year - I just mashed them up and put them in the fermenter rather than extracting the juice (which I later learned isn't all that difficult).
 
I bet a whole bunch of the weird off flavor is tannic acid.... Persimmons can be massively high in that stuff...

It's the whole persimmon "Mouth implode" mouthfeel....

The typical solution to too much tannin is to let it age out... a *LONG* time.. and the tannin eventually transforms into something smokey and almost bacony tasting.... kinda like those traditional English ciders.... The ones that if you try to drink them fresh.. your mouth implodes from the bitter/tannic flavor...

Thanks
 
This is definitely Epic. Your wine is either going to be... scary.. or Legendary!

Since you apparently have turned a farmer into a junky you might think about getting a paint mixer for a drill. Others have used them for exactly this to mix. I hope you have somewhere to store the ferment warm. It would suck to see it all go downhill because of a frost.

Cant wait to hear about the results. And i have a feeling there are gonna be a lot of very crooked rows on farm fields where youre at this year.
 
I bet a whole bunch of the weird off flavor is tannic acid.... Persimmons can be massively high in that stuff...

It's the whole persimmon "Mouth implode" mouthfeel....

The typical solution to too much tannin is to let it age out... a *LONG* time.. and the tannin eventually transforms into something smokey and almost bacony tasting.... kinda like those traditional English ciders.... The ones that if you try to drink them fresh.. your mouth implodes from the bitter/tannic flavor...

Skins are the highest in tannins typically, which is why I removed the skins in my persimmon mead experiment (taste tests still pending!).

You may also try gelatin and/or egg whites to remove excess tannins.
 
Ive got a batch (5 measly gallons) of native persimmon wine(ish) going. Smashed all the persimmons through a colander to separate seeds, skins and caps. That was a TON on work and my hands hated me for several days... Used about 17 lbs of persimmon pulp and topped with tap water to get a little better than 5 1/2 gallons total volume. let all that sit and ferment for about 3 weeks with white labs eau du vis, then racked to secondary getting as little pulp as possible, then pressed the cap through another colander to salvage as much juice as possible. Figure we will be racking another time or two, so it wont hurt anything. Tasting a little during the pressing/racking operation gives me much hope. A little boozey, but that will mellow out in time. the flavor was awesome a quite dry finish, but not like an unripe persimmon. We also used a BOATLOAD of sugar to offset any potential bitterness, but also did our best to make sure we didnt get any "bad" ones. All the ones we ate were like candy, though very unappealing in appearance to the uninitiated persimmon eater. SG was about 1.060 from what I recall. My thoughts are to let it sit another month or two and rack, and if it seems to want it, rack again in another two-three months. Either way it will sit in the corner thinking about what its done for a year, save for a glass or two at each racking.

Your machine gun... nay, RPG approach to wine making might just be the most amazing thing I've ever seen. Before you turn it all to vinegar, let some sit a good long while.

Slainte
 
Interesting read. Thanks for the writeup! the pectin tip is waht I was missing. I am about to embark on a 15 gallon batch of persimmon beer. I was considering a Belgian fruit style, or hefeweisen, but I drink more pale ale than anything else.
 
i love this post, i made some wild persimmons wine, still have not bottled it. Yours looks very similar in color as mine did on the first racking, the type you used is seedless i believe as apposed to the type i grow wild ones.

Ive have picked most of the fruit from my tree's and have it frozen to make smaller batches as the year goes by. there are still some frozen on the tree's here to. Ive tasted mine after the third racking and it taste very good but I'm going to add more sugar to it before bottling..

I was wondering about the head space if theres anything i could add or should i bottle soon?

after third racking..persimmons on the right and apple wine on the left
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persimmonswine2010002.jpg
 
Just bottled up a small batch of wild persimmons wine, tasted good before bottling but i also did back sweetened before bottling. will let it sit for another 6-12 months before drinking..used clear and green bottles just to see if there's a difference in taste, but id imagine i wont notice any difference
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na no grain in that, just bottle cleaner..
yes a s&w PF 500 10 1/2" barrel..w/konus pro pistol scope..wine and guns go great togeather..lol
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Attack of the zombie thread!

Sorry about that.
Since it's been just over 3 years I was wondering if the persimmon project turned out favorably. Surely it's calmed down a bit by now.
 
Solstice it is actually sort of funny you revived the thread. I have been reading thought it since I have a tree full of persimmons that I don't know what to do with.
 
I just bottled 5 gallons of Persimmon wine with a similar process (blended up thawed fruit with skins and all, dumped into fermenter w sugar and various acids, tannins, pectic enzymes, nutrients, etc). Here's my results.
Finished wine is very different from orange goop i started with. I'm not super excited about it: while its definitely drinkable, the flavor is very mild, kinda lacking compared to other fruit wines Ive done. It lost all color, finished wine is crystal clear, looks like water. Finished at .985 SG!! Dont know OG because it was like pudding, too thick to take hydro reading. DRank a glass of finished wine tho, and its quite strong for such a mild flavor. Dangerous.

I am waiting to see how it bottle-ages, but Ive already started a batch with 20 lbs Persimmons, 5 lbs strawberries to give it a little more flavor. I'm calling it Persimmon Blush.

W first batch, lost about a half gallon oozed through blowoff tube in primary (6 gallons in a 6.5 bucket) and in transferring from primary, it formed a solid pulp/yeast/? cake on both the top and bottom of fermenter (with clear liquid in middle, so from 6 gallons of wine, i ended up with 4. Second time around, I mixed in all ingredients but yeast to 6 gallons, then scooped off 1 gallon to top off with in secondary (realizing this will lead to more pulp)


If I could go back and do it again, I would: Only select ripe fruit, and somehow peel them before using. Hindsight is 20/20 though, and once youve frozen them, they all thaw to mush.
 
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