Pyment recipe with Welches Grape Jelly

[RobertHSmith]

My wife has wanted to make mead for while, but I personally like the idea of making a pyment better.

Here is what I would like to make, a sweet grape pyment

5 gallons
12 lbs honey
6, 64oz Welches Grape Jelly jars.


Any thoughts from the mead makers? Yeast suggestions?

[JE]

I would not use jelly, in my personal opinion...unless (and Sean can attest to this) you can find Valpolcelli, which is an Italian Red Wine Jelly.

I have done (with a third place HHHC medal) a White Grape Pyment, using this recipe:

3 lb. honey / gallon
White Grape Juice (no sulfite or sorbate - I used Wild Organics from Shop n Save) to fill

Then follow your preferred method of fermentation (SNA, Dump & Pitch). Either way, I recommend not boiling the honey or combined must.

Hope this helps some, Robert!

[Witch Doctor Dale]

You are going to have to use a lot of pectinase if you have hope for a clear mead. If you want the Concord flavor use grape juice instead of water in the recipe (like Josh does, any will work, if no preservatives).

[JE]

You are going to have to use a lot of pectinase if you have hope for a clear mead. If you want the Concord flavor use grape juice instead of water in the recipe (like Josh does, any will work, if no preservatives).

With the juice, I had no major issues with clarity. And Dale is definitely right...any non-preservative juice will work fine.

[beergoggles]

I would not use jelly, in my personal opinion...unless (and Sean can attest to this) you can find Valpolcelli, which is an Italian Red Wine Jelly.

That mead was delicious. I'm pretty sure Robert got to try some as well.

[RobertHSmith]

Here's what I ended up getting:

15lbs Wildflower honey
4.5 gal Schnuks Grape Juice, no preservatives added.
2 packs of Lalvin 71B-1122

I plan to add some yeast nutrient and I am thinking of powdering a couple of wirlfloc tablets and adding that too. I'll pour in the honey, warm the juice enough to disolve the yeast nutrient and wirlfloc tablets, chill in an ice bath to 80f and then add the rehydrated yeast.

Anything else to worry about?

[Witch Doctor Dale]

Don't worry about warming the juice, the wirlfloc tablets are definitely not needed. Any heating of the juice will lead to a pectin haze that will take years to drop out naturally. Best to avoid it at the beginning.

[RobertHSmith]

Crap Dale, I wish I had seen that earlier. The juice only got to about 100-110F.

With the 15lbs of honey (1.25 gallons) and 4.5gal of juice, the total volume was near 5.75 gal.

I just put the airlock in.

[Witch Doctor Dale]

Add some pectinase now, the less alcohol the better it works.

[JE]

I would not use jelly, in my personal opinion...unless (and Sean can attest to this) you can find Valpolcelli, which is an Italian Red Wine Jelly.

That mead was delicious. I'm pretty sure Robert got to try some as well.

I think you are right, Jim...he very well may have. It was pretty awesome!!

[RobertHSmith]

I got to try it. I'm trying to get close to it if I can with the juice. It was bubbling away last night 2 hrs after adding the yeast and still fermenting well this morning. in 4-6 weeks I'll move it to secondary and we'll see how it tastes.

[JE]

You won't get super close to it without that particular jelly...that's expensive stuff! I looked it up online and it was like $14.00 for 3.5 ounces of the stuff!!

[RobertHSmith]

I've helped make jelly/jam before. Can you get the grapes?

[JE]

Good question...this is made from Valpolicella grapes. It appears to me that it is jelly made from wine created by these grapes, which apparently is valuable and a real treat of a sweet Italian wine.

We would have to do some digging to find all this out and see if we could even make the jelly properly...but I may be game if we can! I'm telling you, that Pyment was good enough to consider buying the darn jelly at that price!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valpolicella

Here's some info I dug up from Wikipedia...

[bmock]

Something else to consider if you want to make a strong apple/grape is using the Concord grape juice concentrate from the frozen section. I made a cider/grape "beverage" with the concentrate and it had an overwhelming Concord flavor.