I processed this year 200 kilo plums.

I washed them first in a bath with household soda and then
with sulphite.

Then I put them in a bucket and mash them with a potato masher.
Works great and I had no pits crushed !!!
Please take care examining the pits as if they are crushed they may
introduce cyanide in the wine (almond smlee and taste),
But with my plums the pits were so hard and almost impossible to crush.

Juice is released almost immediately.
But that depends on the sort you are using.
Add lots of pecto enzyme.

For details look at my web-log entry:
http://wijnmaker.web-log.nl/wijn_web.../22/index.html

Succes
Luc

On Mon, 27 Aug 2007 14:45:28 -0700, Tater wrote:

> My plums are ripe. taste great and I've already gathered enough to
> make a half batch of wine(if i wished)
>
> thing is, they are a pain to pit. local wineshop told me to freeze
> them to help macerate(masticate? crush) sould i do this with the pits
> in? is there an easy way to pit plums? I'd assume boiling them would
> help, but that might draw out icky stuff from
> thttp://wijnmaker.web-log.nl/wijn_weblog/2007/07/22/index.htmlhe pits