Weight and wash the plums, remove the stems, put in large stock pot that has been scrubbed and boiled to be sanitized. Break the skins with sanitized potato masher.

Pour 16 cups boiling water over the bruised plums and cover with lid, let cool 24 hours to sanitize. It will kill any wild yeasts and bacteria. Then, add lemon juice, add sugar, stir. Liquify and add wine yeast when bubbly. Cover with towel and let ferment 6 days on kitchen counter. Stir once a day with sanitized masher.

Immerse plastic tube in boiling water to sanitize and use to syphon fresh plum liquid from stock pot to airlock sanitized container, keep in dark for 2 weeks. Yield was 2 gallons pure juice.

After two weeks, transfer the liquid into the sanitized stockpot, leave the spent yeast behind, scrub bottom out, remove spent yeast, pour liquid back into airlock container, lid and airlock back on, ferment in the dark for 2 more months.

Note: the wet leftover pulp, pits and skins make a quick bottle of plum cider from the sieved liquid. This liquid carbonates quickly in the fridge, ready to drink in two days. Pits and skins go to compost.

A simple hydrometer measures the alcohol potential content of this plum cider. Zero percent alcohol is on the left, 1.000. Five percent alcohol is on the right, 1.010. The cider will ferment more in the bottle, the alcohol will increase 1 % every day till the sucrose sugars are converted to alcohol.