Joe's Quick Grape Mead - Page 7

**Jeebas** · 10-29-2010, 09:02 PM

So if I understand correctly, you mix the 2lbs 1 oz honey in with the 64 oz of grape juice, top with water to get to 1 gallon, add yeast. Rack to secondary over 6 oz honey, 6 oz juice, 1/2t of Sorbate and 1/2 crushed campden tablet.

I dont know very much about mead but with this would you want to prime and then bottle? Or would I only prime if I wanted a "sparkling mead?"

Would two 1 gallon glass carboys be good as pirmary and secondary for something like this? With an amount this small what would be the best way to fill bottles from a 1 gallon growler? Or would racking it to a bottling bucket be the best solution?

thanks for the time,

**eljefebrewing** · 10-29-2010, 09:20 PM

The sorbate and campden serve to squelch the yeasty beasties. If you add them, you won't be able to make a sparkling mead unless you force carb. If you add priming sugar after the campden and sorbate, all you're doing is backsweetening, and if you've already added the extra juice and honey, any extra sugar is just going to push the drink toward cloying.

**Jeebas** · 11-01-2010, 01:20 PM

Thanks for the clarification... As far as the first step, there's no boiling / heating of any kind of the honey / juice mixture, right?

Centexbear · 11-04-2010, 12:59 PM

That is correct, no boiling or heating required.

Although, I did put my jar of honey in some warm water on the stovetop to make it more runny and easier to pour. As you know its slow and thick when room temp.

Good luck and let us know how it goes!

**Jeebas** · 12-07-2010, 08:42 PM

I ended up starting a batch of this on 11/2/2010 and bottling it last night - tastes pretty darn awesome! I had half of 16 oz fliptop and I was good for the evening (I was already pretty darn tired as well). I used the Welch's Blueberry Pomegranate Concord Grape.

Has anyone scaled this up for a 5 gallon batch? Would you just multiply everything by 5 (even the sorbate and campden)?

**AZ_IPA** · 12-07-2010, 08:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeebas

Has anyone scaled this up for a 5 gallon batch? Would you just multiply everything by 5 (even the sorbate and campden)?

Yes. Except the yeast. One pack will still work...

I think I've seen somewhere you could get by with 3 campden tablets - oh Yooper? Where are you?

**Jeebas** · 12-07-2010, 09:45 PM

So 10 lbs of honey and 320 oz juice(5 64 oz bottles) initially (I'm leaving out the 1 oz of buckwheat honey from the recipe - I never did add it in the beginning anyways). Then backsweeten with 30 oz juice and 30 oz honey and 2.5 t of sorbate and 2.5 crushed campden tablets?

I would also assume that the yeast is gonna taken longer than a few weeks to work on such a higher volume? I'm prepared to give a larger batch 6 months if not a year.

**AZ_IPA** · 12-07-2010, 10:14 PM

Yes.

It wouldn't hurt to pitch a couple packs of yeast; I mean, what do they cost? $0.89?

**eljefebrewing** · 02-11-2011, 05:24 AM

Finally got myself a batch of this stuff made up about two weeks ago. I added 1/2 tsp. of yeast nutrient when mixing. Do you think that's good? I have heard that you should stagger additions of nutrient, but I just did it at the outset. Haven't had time to mess with it since then.

PhiKappaGarage · 02-15-2011, 11:13 PM

I'm fixing to make a batch of this in the coming week or two. I need to gather the wine materials as this is my first time outside of beer. Lucky I have an unlimited supply of free wine bottles if it as good as this sounds! My question is, how sweet is this coming out for you folks? I'd like it medium sweet as opposed to dry. I'll post when I start this and the result.