Unlike Ryan, I have yet to become a fan of sake. However, I have become fond of umeshu, a Japanese plum liqueur that is made by steeping unripe ume (plum) fruits in alcohol and sugar. Both the aroma and taste of the final product is splendid. It's what I prefer to order in a restaurant, probably even more so than red wine. This time of year the grocer is stocked with bundles of unripe ume, bags of rock sugar and 35% alcohol shochu. I decided to give home brew a go and attempt to steep my own umeshu. It takes one year to fully mature. It's possible this could be my final chance. Since assembling, I've read more detailed instructions about the importance of sterilizing and completely drying the vessel in the sun. Ooops. Hopefully in one year I'll have tasty umeshu free of intruding flavors from unwanted microbes.
Three Ingredients: 1kg unripe ume plums, 1kg rock sugar, 1.8L shochu
Roo helped by adding the sugar and sorting the plums.
We'll see these guys in one year! Hopefully they will have tranformed into tasty umeshu, at which point we'll have a party because I don't think we can (or should) drink this much umeshu!
2 comments:
can we come visit you in a year? :-)
Please!
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