Let's Make Some Umeshu

I've wanted to try doing this for a long time but would always forget; Ume are only in season for a few weeks in May-June so the time would always pass me by. This time, I remembered! My local Japanese supermarket thankfully has a little corner of their produce section with all this stuff next to each other.

Umeshu is a Japanese plum liqueur. The process is fairly simple:

• put unripe plums (ume) and rock sugar in a big jar
• cover with neutral alcohol (or whatever you want! you're the one making it!)
• let it sit for like a year

Ratios vary based on taste, but the most basic version seems to be 1kg ume, 1kg rock sugar, 1.8 L shochu. As seen above, I accidently bought enough alcohol for two batches, since the jug said 4 liters and I was not accounting for the space the actual fruit would take up.. Also, this alcohol is like, 24%! Weak!!
(Hopefully not too weak, it does need to be high enough proof to prevent bacterial growth. But they were selling this next to the rest of the umeshu stuff so it's probably fine?)

You want to wash the jug and the plums before doing anything else, naturally. I took the extra step of also pouring boiling water into the jug and letting that air dry.

The most tedious part was pulling the little stem remnants off the fruit. Supposedly, these make the final product acrid and bitter. Some recipes also call for poking the fruit full of holes with a fork or toothpick, which I did elect to do. If you can get help for this stage, great. If not, put on some music or something.

Next, just layer up the rock sugar and the fruit. Some recipes say to alternate, some say it doesn't matter. I kinda figure that it doesn't matter since it all dissolves down into the same stuff anyway, but I did alternate it regardless.

I used the whole 1kg bag of sugar, as the recipe dictated. I'm following it for now, and I obviously won't know how it turns out for quite a while, but based on commercially available umeshu I'm inclined to think this'll be a bit sweet for my tastes. I may look into alternatives; I've heard good things about using honey. Hell, assuming I haven't quit drinking by the time next year rolls around (more likely than you might think), I might also shake up what alcohol I'm using.

The tablespoon of salt was not in the recipe, but added of my own volition. It's probably unnecessary and may even be an outright bad idea, but I figure that anything sweet benefits from a bit of salt. And they make umeboshi by packing this stuff in salt anyway, so it's not completely out of nowhere.

Check back in next year, assuming I remember!