Muscadine Pyment questions

[qbst]

We went to a Muscadine Grape Festival over the weekend, and brought home a super-score:

5 lb Supreme Muscadines
4 lb Noble Muscadines

They're both purple grapes -- the Supremes are huge and really sweet. The Nobles are smaller and not quite as sweet, but still fairly sweet, all things considered. The skins are typical muscadine skins -- thick and a bit bitter, almost rubbery in flavor and smell.

My questions:

I was thinking about doing a mead for each sub-species of muscadine; would it be worth it? Would there be noticeable differences to make it worthwhile, or should I just combine them?

Regardless of how I do it, should I add the skins to the ferment? The skins have a fairly distinctive, almost signature, flavor profile. But will the skins add too much tannin/bitterness?


I am aiming for dry-ish in FG, if that helps.

Thanks in advance for all suggestions/tips/advice.


Cheers!

 

[qbst]

Bump?

 

[Zabuza]

If you do a search (I'm a bit too lazy to link right now), you can find a few threads on muscadine grapes in mead. Most of the people on this forum have used them with the skins, so I think you're good on that...do you have a press? Generally grapes are used with a grape press that you would find in a wine maker's setup (for obvious reasons).

I think it is definitely worth it to do two different batches. People tend to add 10-20lbs of fruit to 5 gal batch melomels (not sure about pyments, sorry) in order to get a substantial fruit flavor. Definitely check what the poundage is for pyments, though. Regardless, 4-5 pounds a two gallon batch would equal something like 10-12.5 pounds in a five gallon batch, so it sounds good to me. Otherwise, I'd just do 2-3 pounds in a one gallon batch.

Doing them separately will give you a good idea of the flavor differences between the two, and if you want to use either of them again this knowledge will be very useful.

 

[qbst]

Thanks Zabuza!

 

[Zabuza]

Np! Glad I could help.