joe's grape mead

this is a recipe i found over at gotmead.com.
made by the same fellow from joe's ancient orange mead.
makes 1 gallon
2lbs clover honey
1 ounce buckwheat honey
1/8 teaspoon pectin enzyme(probably not necessary as welch's is already clear)
64 ounces of welch's grape juice with vitamin c added(acsorbic acid) make sure it has no preservatives in ingredients
enough water to make up 1 gallon after adding the honey
lavlin ec1118 yeast

it will ferment fast to dry(about 13% alcohol) because of the type of yeast and all the nutrients and natural sugars in welch's grape juice. it should be to s.g = 1.000 or less in 14-21 days max.
rack to clean carboy over mixture of 6 ounces honey,6 ounces welch's grape juice,1/3 teaspoon sorbate, 1/2 crushed campden tablet
it will stabalize and clear fast. let it clear and set for another 2 weeks and it will be ready to bottle and drink.
it will be medium sweet but smooth and drinkable right away. if you want it semi-sweet use 4 ounces of honey instead of 6 at racking.
started dec 10/06 and bottled jan 28/07 tastes like red wine to me but i am just recovering from a cold-swmbo likes it

This sounds really good! You said it tastes like red wine- does it taste "concord grape-y"? I think I might try this- thanks for sharing it.

Lorena

the author said it is drinkable at bottling but will improve with aging.
i am told i have no taste buds by swmbo but i would say there is a grapey flavour in there.

I'm gonna try this, for sure.

That looks really good. Now here's one more thing to try.

Like Rich said one more thing to make. This does look tasty. I would assume that to make a three gallon batch, I would just multiply all ingredients by three?

Wonder if this will take off like the Apfelwein thread?

I'm thinking of trying this but with blueberry instead of grape next week...

hey I ended my Joe's grape at his scheduled time but find mine to be vile. I split the batch into separate sweetness levels but still find it undrinkable. I think the stuff probably needs more time to let the yeast get rid of byproducts. Have a second batch going at somewhere between 2-3 months I think (original recipe before sweetening/stabilizing) and will report how it goes.

Yum that looks pretty tasty, it's been soooo tempting to do a mead lately cos I just recently got my hands on a couple of 1 gallon glass jugs that would be perfect to use as fermentors, but I really need them to store other alcohol. Argg!!! Maybe after the whole christmas/New Years rush is over.

I started this recipe up on Friday but used the white grape / cherry welches 100% juice. It smells really, really good and is fermenting like crazy. I'm hoping my wife likes it, I'm going to sweeten it as described since she normally likes sweeter beverages as opposed to dry. I cant wait to try it out!


nb

rustang64 said:

I'm thinking of trying this but with blueberry instead of grape next week...

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