Absurd persimmon project

[aardvark]

This one gives you an idea what stirring is like:

http://s977.photobucket.com/albums/ae259/aardvark23/?action=view&current=MVI_0131.flv

 

[Quietandsimple]

These guys are heroes in my book. They take Kalashnikov-style homebrewing to the next level.

 

[dwells]

It's alive!

 

[thantos]

More pics please!

 

[Dr_Gordon_Freeman]

Wow! How in the hell are you guys going to siphon that!

 

[psychedelic_brew]

We may rent a press and run the pulp through it to get all the juice that we can.

i think that might have been my first thought, rather than fermenting 100 gallons of pulp. this looks so awesome. i wish someone would give me hundreds of pounds of random fruits

 

[caphector]

What do I need to do to get a bottle of this? It sounds very interesting.

 

[aardvark]

What you can't see is that it isn't uniformly thick. Between the pectinase and the fermentation, a great deal of separation has occurred. Under the thick pulp at the top is liquid.

 

[jkpq45]

Officially addicted to updates, now.

 

[Randar]

What you can't see is that it isn't uniformly thick. Between the pectinase and the fermentation, a great deal of separation has occurred. Under the thick pulp at the top is liquid.

Colanders and cheese cloth is how you would do it in a kitchen setting. Scoop up a bunch of the top pulp, pack into a cheese-cloth lined colander, press, pick cheese cloth up into a sort of ball and squeeze what you can out of it, then discard remnants. Repeat until you have reduced the pulp to a satisfactory level and then you can probably siphon. Might want to check a restaurant supply place for a large quantity of cheesecloth, but this is probably the cheapest way to do it at this point.

That "should" get you to a satisfactory level of sediment that will settle out. You also might have to do it in a couple of sittings with a week rest between to allow the sediment to "reconvene" as it were.

 

[jkpq45]

5 gallon paint strainer bags and a wine press. Fill the bag with pulp, chuck it into the press, squeeze, repeat.

It'd take a few batches with my press, but it's doable.

 

[Randar]

5 gallon paint strainer bags and a wine press. Fill the bag with pulp, chuck it into the press, squeeze, repeat.

It'd take a few batches with my press, but it's doable.

Good call, had never even thought about paint strainer bags.

 

[aardvark]

i think that might have been my first thought, rather than fermenting 100 gallons of pulp. this looks so awesome.

well, the persimmons were very ripe and it would have been impossibe to get any juice out of them.

 

[aardvark]

What do I need to do to get a bottle of this? It sounds very interesting.

You aren't far from me. When it's done you can come pick up a bottle. How's that?

 

[Emerald]

Just a helpful suggestion- instead of cheese cloth to strain any pulp out, just go to a fabric store and buy a nice tightly woven unbleached, muslin- I make cheese and use the unbleached muslin to hold and strain whey from my cheeses. It works better and is quite inexpensive to buy by the yard. It just needs to be washed in the washer but with no fabric softener.. I usually pour boiling water over my cloth to make it sterile for cheese draining, or if it is quite big just boil it a bit in a large saucepan before using it to strain. I would guess that you could also soak it in starsan or other sanitizers. Just don't forget to wash it first as it usually has sizing in it to make it very stiff on the bolts.

By the way-- VERY COOL PROJECT! :rockin: That barrel of orange goo looks likes the aftermath of "The Great Pumpkin" meets "Texas Chainsaw Massacre"!
I look forward to more updates!

 

[bubbachunk]

Awesome, subscribing

 

[caphector]

You aren't far from me. When it's done you can come pick up a bottle. How's that?

That sounds great. I'll keep an eye on this thread.

Since I'm nearby if you need a hand I'll see if I can swing by and help out.

 

[PhotoKirk]

Tagged for updates. This thread rocks!

 

[aardvark]

Last week, under the cover of darkness, D and I scraped off the layer of pulp that had floated to the top of the barrels. The plan was that we would press the pulp with one of the methods mentioned above. We were both very curious what we would find. We knew we had liquid in there somewhere, but how much and how well it was separated from the pulp, we didn't know. This is what it looked like initially:

I don't know how evident it is in the picture, but, it was pretty thick. The first bucketful was so obviously dry that there was no point in pressing it.

After filling the bucket twice it was apparent that we were pretty close to the liquid. The third bucked was wet enough that we could have pressed some liquid out, but it was raining and we were feeling pretty good about how much liquid we were going to have. You can get a good sense of how the pulp and liquid had separated from this picture here:

After less than 4 buckets of pulp, we were done, and were left with about 40 gallons of liquid per barrel. This is what the barrel that had no sugar added looked like afterward:

The two barrels were mostly the same, except that toward the end of straining the pulp off the barrel that had sugar added, something strange happened. I can only describe it as "turning over" as though there was some pulp that had somehow been trapped on the bottom. After it "turned" the liquid was quite a bit thicker. We left both barrels and since then the one that didn't have sugar added has settled and looks like we might be nearly ready to rack. The one that did have sugar added started to show signs of fermentation again and some pulp had floated to the top. We'll let that one go for a while before straining again.

Other than a somewhat funky smell, I am very happy with how this is turning out...our yield has been great and the amount of work hasn't been that bad considering how much fruit we have.

 

[psychedelic_brew]

every time i return to this thread i'm reminded why the subject line is so fitting.

thanks for the update

 

[scinerd3000]

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!!!!

 

[aardvark]

Here is a picture of what things look like after settling a bit. You can see that it is clearing nicely.

 

[aardvark]

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!

 

[truckjohn]

It reminds me of the old adage:
Have Persimmons, Make Persimmon-ade

 

[jdinger29]

Very, very cool! I am subscribing...

 

[josiahcox]

Progress report?

 

[scinerd3000]

any update?!!!!!

 

[JarrodH]

Any news yet?

 

[lucasszy]

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

 

[aardvark]

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

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.