Persimmons
  • BenvarineBenvarine
    Posts: 1,606
    Anyone use persimmons in brewing or wine? Or maybe mead? This has been a great season in Missouri. I picked a cup and a half (total pulp) last night in about 10 minutes. If anyone has a receipe, love to see it.
  • FuzzyFuzzy
    Posts: 49,777
    i don't even know what that is.
    The pinnacle of lame and awesome in one singular moment. -Lake
  • frydogbrewsfrydogbrews
    Posts: 44,679
    it should work, the problem will be making sure every single one of them is perfectly ripe. i imagine one "chalky" one might screw up the whole batch. may not though.
  • frydogbrewsfrydogbrews
    Posts: 44,679
    so you know amounts.....
    i collected two five gallon buckets of plums from a neighbors tree. i thought this was a shit ton!
    once i squished them they all fit in one 5 gallon bucket and then once i strained the liquid, i have maybe 2.5 gallons, if i'm lucky.
  • frydogbrewsfrydogbrews
    Posts: 44,679
    some simple math shows that if you want 10 gallons of persimmons according to your 1.5 cups in ten minutes, it would take 450 minutes or 7.5 hours....... to collect enough for 2.5 gallons of wine.

    *its very possible my math is wrong.
  • ceanntceannt
    Posts: 53,828
    I love persimmons!
    Not many around here..... used to eat em all the time back home ... never tried brewing with them .... I would kill to have about 15 2X2s 15" long of the heartwood ...and a couple more of sapwood ....

    scoob
    Never attribute to malice, that which can adequately be explained by stupidity.
  • BenvarineBenvarine
    Posts: 1,606

    some simple math shows that if you want 10 gallons of persimmons according to your 1.5 cups in ten minutes, it would take 450 minutes or 7.5 hours....... to collect enough for 2.5 gallons of wine.

    *its very possible my math is wrong.



    Nice math, was that on the ACT's? For a more production oriented harvest I have another method in mind. Bed sheets around the tree and a good shake tends to drop a bunch, then just fold up and dump in a bucket.
  • BenvarineBenvarine
    Posts: 1,606
    I found a few recipes on Hopville.com Not all have tasting notes, so who knows how they will turn out. One uses vienna and wheat malt as a base along with some other specialty malts for flavor and color. Then only two hop additions.
  • BenvarineBenvarine
    Posts: 1,606
    I found another recipe that called for nearly a half pound of hops in their persimmon beer.
  • BenvarineBenvarine
    Posts: 1,606
    Are

    so you know amounts.....
    i collected two five gallon buckets of plums from a neighbors tree. i thought this was a shit ton!
    once i squished them they all fit in one 5 gallon bucket and then once i strained the liquid, i have maybe 2.5 gallons, if i'm lucky.



    Are you making wine or Melomel from the plums?
  • BenvarineBenvarine
    Posts: 1,606

    i don't even know what that is.


    It is a small fleshy fruit, native to the Midwest but you can get Chinese ones at grocery stores. They are orange in color, have big seeds in them. You can't pick them, they need to fall off or be gently Shaken from the tree to be considered ripe. Unripe is aweful, it will pucker your mouth.
  • FuzzyFuzzy
    Posts: 49,777
    Benvarine said:

    i don't even know what that is.


    It is a small fleshy fruit, native to the Midwest but you can get Chinese ones at grocery stores. They are orange in color, have big seeds in them. You can't pick them, they need to fall off or be gently Shaken from the tree to be considered ripe. Unripe is aweful, it will pucker your mouth.


    i googled em. they look like a tomato. :-?
    The pinnacle of lame and awesome in one singular moment. -Lake
  • ceanntceannt
    Posts: 53,828
    Make great pie .... very tart
    Never attribute to malice, that which can adequately be explained by stupidity.
  • frydogbrewsfrydogbrews
    Posts: 44,679
    Benvarine said:

    Are

    so you know amounts.....
    i collected two five gallon buckets of plums from a neighbors tree. i thought this was a shit ton!
    once i squished them they all fit in one 5 gallon bucket and then once i strained the liquid, i have maybe 2.5 gallons, if i'm lucky.



    Are you making wine or Melomel from the plums?


    i want it to be a wine, but i think it will be a melomel just because i don't have a 2.5 gal glass carboy.

    racking and doing a secondary press this weekend. i left it on the skins for two weeks to essentially make a rose' but with plums
  • scoobscoob
    Posts: 16,617
    My uncle has several persimmon trees out in Cali, I love a few for breakfast, I would imagine a mead made with them would be outstanding. Perhaps a box of them needs to be shipped to me stat!
    Jesus didn't wear pants
  • BenvarineBenvarine
    Posts: 1,606
    @frydogbrews put together a persimmon Melomel recipe for me. I'm in.
  • frydogbrewsfrydogbrews
    Posts: 44,679
    best way i can think of is to make a mead as per normal, but scale back the honey to 12 lbs (maybe even 10lbs) and then after primary, add in the fruit slurry for another 2 weeks. this is what i did with the blueberry melomel and it worked great.

    gather the persimmons now and freeze them to get the most juice out when you squish.

    i would suggest 71-B yeast, Narbonne, for its ability to eat up extra acid as the fruit will be more acidic
  • C_BC_B
    Posts: 88,949
    Blueberry melomel? That sounds amazing. Is the recipe posted here?
    "On it. I hate software." ~Cpt Snarklepants
  • frydogbrewsfrydogbrews
    Posts: 44,679
    no, because any recipe i posted wouldn't come true to how it tastes. i had to repitch twice and all kinds of funky stuff happened. at one point it was stalled for two months while i tried to forget it existed.

    best mead i have ever made, but entirely impossible to replicate. still have a case of it though.
  • BenvarineBenvarine
    Posts: 1,606

    best way i can think of is to make a mead as per normal, but scale back the honey to 12 lbs (maybe even 10lbs) and then after primary, add in the fruit slurry for another 2 weeks. this is what i did with the blueberry melomel and it worked great.

    gather the persimmons now and freeze them to get the most juice out when you squish.

    i would suggest 71-B yeast, Narbonne, for its ability to eat up extra acid as the fruit will be more acidic



    So freeze whole persimmons, then thaw and squish at a later date?
  • FuzzyFuzzy
    Posts: 49,777
    yes.
    The pinnacle of lame and awesome in one singular moment. -Lake
  • FuzzyFuzzy
    Posts: 49,777


    gather the persimmons now and freeze them to get the most juice out when you squish.



    and here's a simple explanation on why:

    when the water inside the cell walls freezes it makes these kind of shapes:

    image

    Since these crystals take up more room that they did in liquid form and they have nice razor edges, they pretty much tear the cell walls into ribbons. That's why frozen fruit is always mushy and makes a nice puddle of juice when you that it out. So, for the purpose of fermentation, it's usually a good plan to freeze the fruit for at least a week before you try to get the juice out of em.
    The pinnacle of lame and awesome in one singular moment. -Lake
  • frydogbrewsfrydogbrews
    Posts: 44,679
    silly plants....thinking they're all tough with a cell wall, until it gets cold, then bam!

    scoob
  • scoobscoob
    Posts: 16,617
    I freeze all of my otherwise fresh fruit when used for brewing, it hasn't done me wrong yet!
    Jesus didn't wear pants