U-me-shu - Japanese plum liquor

This year I decided to try something new: making umeshu.
DH was one of the fast and fortunate ones to get 2kgs of special plums from cuoca.com.
Turns out they sold out in 10 minutes!
I washed them carefully, wiped them dry very carefully, then plucked off the brown tops, and let them dry for a day.



Then they were washed with gin, which supposedly takes out the tannic flavors.







Then, I put them into these containers.
The one on the left is rum & rock sugar.
The second one is brandy & honey.
Third one is brandy & rock sugar.





The right one is just plums & fruit sugar to make ume syrup, for my Little Man.
The plums for the syrup were plucked with a toothpick 20 times each.






This is what they look like today, 3 days later.
The one with honey is kind of murky, and the plums aren't floating yet.
A lot of the plum juices have come out of the ones plucked with toothpicks for the syrup.




The watermelon hat is done, but not enough height.
This picture was taken before the seeds were added.
I am redoing it.
Hopefully it will be done during the Japan vs. Australia match.