A community dedicated to homebrewing beer, mead, wine, cider and everything in between. If it ferments, bring it over here.
Share recipes, ideas, ask for feedback or just advice.
Some starting points for beginners:
Quick and diry guide to fermenting fruit - cider and wine
You haven't tried it before, so I'll suggest just brewing one of the kits you have. Use it to figure out some process and hey, you might still get something drinkable. If not, you'll still be setting yourself up for success with fresh new ingredients.
Edit: oh, and a plum wine is super easy: rock sugar (Belgian candy sugar), vodka, plums. Let it sit for 6+ months.
Ah ok so more of an infusion process than actual fermentation?
Yeah, the plum wine is a simple infusion.
This is a great idea. Use the kit ingedients to practice the PROCESS and test your existing equipment, even if it's just a stock pot and strainers on your kitchen stove, that's a great place to start. The main thing is sanitation. Got any brewing sanitizer?
Depends on a kit, the malt sirup is shelf stable but hops and yeast is definitely bad. Just try something, follow the instructions for start and you will see if you like it.
I don't know much about plums other than distillat so can't suggest much on that.
In my experience, keeping your equipment clean and sanitized is the most important step.
The two major things to tackle. My advice would be to just start making beer. The more you make, the better you will get at it. Join a forum to get advice. Don't be put off if it doesn't come out right at first.
On top of what other said, there is a trick to plum: they usually ferment quite nicely (I recommend Lalvin RC212 yeast) but the trick is to bottle condition them for 5 years minimum. It is absolutely worth it.
Don't go for lambics though, they are tricky and until you understand exactly why, I don't recommend it. They are totally not newbie stuff. But aim for plum christmas ale, that's very easy and just in time to try!
If the juice is concentrated, like molasses it'll be fine. Hops might be ok if they're vacuum sealed and freeze dried as they often are.. they look like little pellets. If they're just dried then get some more.
Just follow the instructions.
If you're bottle conditioning, (adding a bit of sugar in the bottle to carbonate) I would recommend using plastic coke bottles. They're pressure safe and don't explode like glass does if you add too much sugar.
Another way that prevents bottles from exploding is corking with wine corks slightly slices across to hold a thick thread that wraps around the neck to hold the cork against pressure. It's quite weak seal that should pop before the glass.
My friend once had some bottles of sparkling hard cider bottled like that (naturally explosive), left for a trip in winter (Texas), temperature went below freezing, so his landlord (old redneck lady with confederate flags and deer skulls on her house) went into his place and turned on gas stove. Sure she forgot to turn it off when weather normalized to regular +10C, so when he came back, it was hot sauna with apple flavor, but no broken glass at least!
So I shouldn't trust those pop-top glass bottles?
Looks like the juice wasn't concentrated enough, so maybe I'll juice some plums and cherries this year
The pop top ones are great and I love them but it's easy to mess something up and make them pretty dangerous.
If you have a hygrometer you can measure the sugar content of your brew which takes out the guess work, get one of them before glass bottling. Hygrometers are like $10 and well worth having.
Plum and cherry wine sounds divine. Good luck!
Hang on to the hops, aged or "cheesy" hops can be great for brewing certain styles, like lambics. They can add desirable flavors because they are aged. Just makes sure that they're not moldy. The good oils/volatiles may still be in those cones!
Actually, I remember how I started: I've got a kit and waited for a while with it. Then dumped all of it and just bought fullgrain ingredients, no regrets at all. Starting with a kit seems like harder path with less sure result from my current experience. Maybe it's a way you should consider too?
Alright so just go talk to my local brewer supply for what I need 👍🏼
If you have a brewer supply locally, totally just invade them. The job is usually quite boring, they LOVE initiating neophytes.
Just go with the least expensive but still fresh stuff, just enough for one batch. Don't let the brew shop sell you a ton of stuff you don't need right away. Careful. :)