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Thursday, October 16, 2014

Concord Grape Wine or Pyment?

I strained the concord grape wine,
but I didnt want to waste the juice in what was left over, so I tried to figure out how to press it at home.

I wrapped it in cheesecloth
and pressed it with a bowl.
I definitely got more wine but the result was still wet. So I started to do it in smaller batches by hand.


I only recommend this method with less than 5 gallons of fermenting wine and friends. But it worked and I got about 1 1/4 gallons of wine.
I added a few lbs of honey to that yesterday and its already bubbling again.
No sulfites, no yeast, no nutrient, nothing. So from what I read, to make a pyment you use grapes and honey and make a wine mead combo, but you start the ferment with both ingredients at the same time. I am not sure I can technically call this a pyment if I added the honey and started a second fermentation after the wine had fermented. Its not a sweetened wine though because the sugar will be eaten by the yeast bacteria. I plan to add oak cubes since I dont have an oak barrel to age this in, and some spices-cloves etc. depending on how it tastes in a week or so when it stops bubbling and running over.
11/9/14 note: This tastes delicious. I think I might spice some of it, and age it, then bottle it. Its sparkling now, so I may bottle some to preserve the fresh taste and sparkling qualities. But to answer the"pyment" question this site says its technically a Concord Grape Melomel and that Pyment in the historical sense was a wine with honey added at drinking time to sweeten it. However, on wikipedial under Mead it says that a Melomel is made with berries and a Mead that is fermented with grape juice is called a Pyment. The recipe on the link  above boils the honey with water before adding grape juice and then uses yeast and nutrient, which I didnt use. My project explores the ways before those innovations and adds honey after the grapes have finished their initial ferment-not exactly fermented with juice but wine, so I still dont quite know what to call it, except homemade Concord Grape Honey (help you through the winter) beverage with a nice kick, or just "honey-wine" for short.

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