So I have a persimmon tree outside my new place with a lot (Perhaps even a buttload) of persimmons on it. I don’t think I will get to it this year but next year perhaps. I was wondering if they could be used in a fermentation some how. I suppose a wine would work or a mead. any ideas out there? Of course they are awfully good just to eat.
I still have nightmares about eating unripe persimmons, they are horribly nasty creations. Even the ripe ones have very little flavor IIRC, but it has been many, many years since I’ve eaten one.
When unripe they are fairly nasty, chalky and astringent. but when ripe (These ones anyway) are wonderfully sweet and flowery. Never liked them before but I have never had them off the tree until now.
I have been thinking about making a mead with the persimmons from the trees on my property.
I wonder if you would get any color from them. a neon orange mead might be interesting.
I want to make a mead with persimmons too, but I need to get the tree first. I’ve been eying this one - coincidentally, a “meader”. 
http://www.raintreenursery.com/catalog/productdetails.cfm?productid=D255
How about that?!
looks different than the one I have. the fruit on mine is more orange with a thicker looking skin. I don’t know if it’s an american variety or what. but that one looks like a good PNW variety.
If you go to that website and search for persimmons you can see pictures of more varieties, Asian and American. They might not have yours, but it’s worth a look if you don’t know what kind it is.
Cool, I searched and it looks like I have the hachiya
http://www.raintreenursery.com/catalog/productdetails.cfm?productid=D218
“Astringent until ripened off the tree and eaten when soft.” I will agree with this. although I have picked a few that were so ripe they were ready to fall off the tree and there was no astringency there. but they ripen on the counter nicely. My landlady says she picks them and uses them as decoration for the holidays and then eats them when really ripe.
I wonder how much one would need for a 5 gallon batch of mead. and then the questions start. I assume you would want to pasteurize but not set the pectin, crush? puree? skin on or off? ahh so many questions.
Having no experience with them, I’d start with 1#/gallon and see how it goes. Rather than pasteurize, I would dice them and freeze them, then thaw before adding to secondary. The alcohol and pH should keep at bay any wild critters that survived freezing.
But maybe someone else has used them before . . .
Freezing would be a good idea as they don’t seem to ripen all together. dicing might be… well dicey… they might squish more than dice. Unless I get my knife sharpened (But that’s another thread)
Here’s an interesting site :
http://www.whiteowlwinery.com/Persimmon-Wine.html
Thanks for the link Bob, that sounds like a really cool process. I know people who do it with beer in a barrels, but not with a fortified wine like that, especially when they’re distilling the product to fortify it. Very cool.
indeed a cool site. Makes my mouth water. I am thinking that I might have to try this. God I wish I had more room. I only have room to have one fermenter goign at a time though so this is going to have to wait. I figured out that for a 1# per gallon mead it would only take about 15 persimmons so maybe I will manage to pulp and freeze 20 or so and put this at position 3 of my brew card. first up, belgian strong, then IPA THEN persimmon mead.
I was hoping to get ~ 500-100lbs of wine grapes down here in S. New Mexico but, even though there;s vines down here planted before anyone knew where California was, I could not persuade any growers to sell me any. Now I’m considering buying a bunch of persimmon juice from Wally World and making some wine out of that.
I lived in your area for a while (Silver city) Have you tried a hard cherry cider? might be yummy
Hard Cherry Cider sounds good but, after living in California for 20 years…I really miss the grape thing.
yeah I can understand that. My wife wanted to get soem wine grapes from a few growers around here (Bay Area CA) to make some ‘varietal’ jellies but I couldn’t locate any easily so we just bought some local (Solano county) wine and made wine jelly instead. it’s pretty yummy. I know you can get the already pressed juice through my LHBS (Oakbarrel) they are one the web you might check that out. Or Napa fermentation supply, don’t know if they are on the web. you wouldn’t get to press your own but…
I was in the S.F Bay area and have shopped at those places you mentioned. Actually, I still own my house in Livermore. There’s like 50 wineries there now.