Joe's Grape Mead

[beala]

I recently read a post in which "Joe's Grape Mead/Pyment" was recommended as a good beginners quick sweet mead. It looks like it's by the same Joe who made JAOM. Anyway, the directions were sort of vague and I was wondering if anyone here has any experience with this particular recipe. Here it is:
http://www.gotmead.com/index.php?option=com_rapidrecipe&page=viewrecipe&recipe_id=120&Itemid=6
This is the step in question:

Rack to clean carboy over mixture of 6-oz honey, 6-oz Welch's grape juice, 1/2t of Sorbate and 1/2 crushed campden tablet.

Is that honey part of the original 2lb clover and 1oz buckwheat? If so, how much of the buckwheat and how much of the clover. If not, what kind of honey should I use? Clover? Lastly, is the grape juice saved from the original 64oz bottle?

My hunch is that those are not part of the original ingredient list, but I was hoping one of you knew for sure. Thanks.

 

[CBBaron]

The additions before bottling are in addition to the must recipe.
You can use your choice of honey but clover is probably the best bet.
I just recently bottled my batch and I found it to be very grapey. I'm hoping it mellows out some with age.
Craig

 

[beala]

Do you think the grapey-ness could be reduced by following the semi-sweet instructions?

It will be medium sweet but smooth and drinkable right away. If you want it semi sweet use 4-oz honey instead of 6-oz / gal.

It sounds like you weren't very impressed with this mead. Is there another quick sweet mead you'd recommend?

 

[GrantLee63]

I made a few batches of this mead and thought they were all pretty good - the best one was made with raw wildflower honey and oaked for 3 months, and finished at 1.015. Personally, I prefer this one over JAO any day. YMMV

- GL63

 

[buraglio]

I made a few batches of this mead and thought they were all pretty good - the best one was made with raw wildflower honey and oaked for 3 months, and finished at 1.015. Personally, I prefer this one over JAO any day. YMMV

- GL63

I've done several versions of this mead and all have turned out pretty well. My best result w/o aging (basically following the recipe for the most part) was with 100% Illinois wildflower honey. The reaction at my local homebrew club was "this is pretty good", and my wife and myself liked it so I'd call it a success. I'm not a huge wine fan but this one was pretty good. I used the sweeter mead method. I've also modified this recipe and done a raspberry cyser (still aging) and a white grape-cherry mead (good but still aging as well).
Like I said, I used 100% wildflower honey and it was still really, really good. Folks are still asking for bottles of it.

 

[CBBaron]

Do you think the grapey-ness could be reduced by following the semi-sweet instructions?It sounds like you weren't very impressed with this mead. Is there another quick sweet mead you'd recommend?

You might like the fruitness of the mead, it just did not suit my tastes. I actually made it semi-sweet without using additional juice to hopefully reduce the grape flavor.
I do think the mead will improve with age. I will give it some time before sampling it again.

I think this mead would be much better with the Welche's white grape juice (Catawba). I will probably try that experiment at some point.

I am still very new at making mead so I don't have much experience. However I just recently bottled a cyser I made that tasted great. I used a gallon of local, pasteurized cider and added 2# of cheap clover honey, and yeast nutrients. I fermented using Champagne yeast but it still has a slightly sweet flavor when I bottled it. I think the key was to use the fresh cider versus the heavily processed juice found in the grocery store. This cider had a very delicate flavor of apple and honey with floral notes. I'll leave it age some but I expect I will have to make some more as this first batch will not last. Next fall I am going to make a 5gal batch.
Craig