Pyment Recomendation

[Todd Peterson]

Good evening folks.

While I wait on my mixed berry mead to come out of primary, I have had some time to ponder what my next mead will be.

I’m leaning toward a pyment using the grape juice from a wine kit.

Does anyone have a recommendation on a high quality wine kit to get the juice from? Not opposed to spending some money for quality ingredients.

Also, I’m thinking there may be better options for a red wine pyment other than my stockpile of 71b yeast.

If you have some experience doing a red wine pyment in the fashion, I’d love to hear your feedback.

Todd Peterson

 

[Bobby_M]

Good evening folks.

While I wait on my mixed berry mead to come out of primary, I have had some time to ponder what my next mead will be.

I’m leaning toward a pyment using the grape juice from a wine kit.

Does anyone have a recommendation on a high quality wine kit to get the juice from? Not opposed to spending some money for quality ingredients.

Also, I’m thinking there may be better options for a red wine pyment other than my stockpile of 71b yeast.

If you have some experience doing a red wine pyment in the fashion, I’d love to hear your feedback.

Todd Peterson

The Wine Expert Private Reserve Cab Sauv is exceptionally good.

 

[MightyMosin]

I have 1 completed and 2 more in progress. I used inexpensive kits as these are my first and didn't want to go too expensive on the experiment.

The completed one is a Cab Sauv grape juice with Mesquite honey. When fermentation was completed I back sweetened with 80% Blueberry Blossom and 20% Mesquite honeys. The mesquite in the back sweetening was caramelized/bochet.

That went into a barrel that used to hold rum. It has been there for. About 5 months and is ready to be bottled soon.

I didn't go high quality grape juice but I believe it tastes as well as most commercial pyments I have tried and certainly better than some others.

 

[Todd Peterson]

Thank you both for the input and perspective.

What if the SG of the grape juice? How high do you take the starting gravity with your honey addition?

Will the must ferment dry? What yeast has been successful in the red wine pyment world?

Todd Peterson

 

[MightyMosin]

The wine kits I used were for making six gallons. I made up half the wine must and then checked its gravity. I then figured out how much honey I needed to have it be 50+% of the fermentable being honey.

In the case of the Pinot Noir pyment I recently brewed, its SG was 1.076; this was ~3 gallons of wine must.
I added 14.5 Lb. Blueberry Blossom honey to water to get a SG of 1.161.
The wine must and honey must blended yielded a OG of 1.120. This was ~6.25 gallons of must.

These have fermented dry. I used Lalvin RC212 and have been happy with that choice for these.

 

[MightyMosin]

One last comment regarding honey content. How much do you want it tasting like wine vs mead? The more sugar content from the honey will affect your final product and using honey to back sweeten will add more honey flavor to it all. So using 50+% of honey makes it a mead and how much more you go above that will affect your honey profile in the final product.

IMO the more bold the wine grape the bolder the type of honey to use if you want the honey to cut through. My first pyment is a Cabernet Sauvignon juice base. As that wine can be pretty bold I wanted something bold to try and cut through that. I ended using Trader Joes Mostly Mesquite and was quite happy with how well it made its through fermentation.

When I back sweetened that pyment, I didn't want that extreme bold Mesquite honey to overpower things and I ended up using about 80% Blueberry Blossom honey and 20% Mostly Mesquite. I ended up bochet/caramelizing the Mesquite portion used in the back sweetening and I like the added character it added while being a subtle change in the profile. Props to my wife for that suggestion.

 

[Todd Peterson]

Thanks for the feedback. Looking forward to putting a pyment together. Need to figure out which varietal of grape juice and then what I would like the final product to taste like from a residual sugar perspective.

I’m confident that I’ll have more questions.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

Todd Peterson