Idea I have.....

[newguy]

So I've made a few batches of mead. so far my favorite among me and my friends and club has been Joe's ancient orange. I really like the simplicity in the recipe as well as the complex flavors. I also really like the sweetness. I'm learning that I'm definitely I sweet mead fan opposed to dry.

Anyway here is my idea. I want to take the existing recipe for Joe's ancient orange and tweak it a bit. I want to do a grape mead.

Now here is my initial thoughts. Same amount of honey , same yeast (bread yeast) and just add some Welches grape juice. I still want a very sweet mead with a lot of honey flavor coming through, also with a nice compliment of grape from the Welches.

So obviously no oranges or cinnamon or raisins, but is there anything else you might think would complement this mead?

Also I'm wondering what water to juice ratio I should use. Any suggestions?


And to add I have seen Joes recipe for his grape mead, but I want to keep it simple like the orange mead as well as keeping with the bread yeast.

Any suggestions you all would have will be welcomed!

Cheers,

 

[Trappist Artist]

Does the Welches Grape juice have K-sorbate? I just had a heck of a time finding apple cider that didn't have any in it.

 

[MikeRLynch]

This is called a pyment, (mead fermented with grapes). On Gotmead.com they have oodles of recipes you can follow. Obviously the first thing you'd want to do is get rid of the bread yeast and upgrade to wine yeast. It costs almost the same and will yield a much cleaner tasting product. You can find them on any website, and it's the first suggestion anyone here will tell you. The second isn't so much a suggestion as a warning. If you use grape concentrate from the store, your mead will taste like grape-juice mead. I've made a wine with concord grape concentrate and it was basically alcoholic welches, aka, a pedophiles dream. To avoid this, limit the grape flavor you're going to impart on the mead. Use honey as the primary fermentable, and simply flavor it a bit with the concentrate, don't use it as a alcohol producing agent.

sorry for the keyboard diarreah, had one to many blonde ales

mike

 

[malkore]

that, or buy some concentrate from the LHBS...mine stocks cans the same size as LME cans, but its merlot grapes, or chardonney, etc...

maybe that'd work a lot better than welches. I made a cran-apple mead over a decade ago, and it just tasted odd...sorta like Jesus Juice...

 

[david_the_greek]

shooooot I'm not liking the consensus you guys are coming to I have a bunch of concord Pyment aging and my dreams for something glorious are quickly crashing. Granted it was inexpensive (relatively) to make so I shouldn't have expected too much, but still. Oh well I guess I'll just have to wait it out.

 

[OdinOneEye]

If I were you, use a wine or mead yeast. Bread yeasts are teh suxx0rz.

 

[newguy]

If I were you, use a wine or mead yeast. Bread yeasts are teh suxx0rz.

LOL OneEye, All RU base's belong to us. Ohh wait wrong forum. Actually I didn't mind the bread yeast at all. I like that it will phoop out early and not convert all the sugars to alcohol. The sweets obtained was very nice IMO. I've used both dry and sweet yeasts before. the WL sweet mead yeast was also pretty good as well.


And thanks ML for the advice. I think I'm going to reduce the amount of Welches a bit and see. I can always add more or less to my liking. I'm going to give this a shot this weekend see how it goes.

cheers,

 

[CBBaron]

Here is a highly rated grape juice mead from the same Joe:
Joe's Grape Mead
However it does use wine yeast instead of bread yeast.
Craig

 

[malkore]

don't get me wrong, it'll be drinkable, but its probably going be 'heavy'...somewhat cloying...likely not quite what you'd hoped for. aging it for an extended period may help a great deal.

taste is always a subjective thing. you may love it, others may be less impressed, and some will always say it sucks or cry blasphemy.

unless you're submitting it for a competition, the only opinion that really matters is yours