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Doughnuts are fattening you know......

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  • Doughnuts are fattening you know......

    Ok, so despite the title, this is sort of "a tale of two pyments", or maybe 3.......

    This years grapefest led me to get 5 boxes of Merlot and 5 boxes of Tempranillo. I did my usual thing (not intending to be contrary though), and when they got home, I started adding honey, because I wanted to make "fresh grape pyment" (for the uninitiated, a pyment is a mead made with grape juice and honey, instead of water).

    This was my first attempt at using fresh grapes, and while I, like many others, have found working with fresh grape can be exceedingly messy, I'm pretty pleased with how it's gone, thus far.

    Now I did make a few errors. I figured that I could use the gravity figures for the grapes that "the others" posted over at the grapefest 2012 forum, but stupidly, I didn't take a gravity reading after adding the honey.

    I basically, added 1 kg of honey per "box" of grapes, 500g initially, then 2 step feeds of 250 grammes.

    Throughout the ferment, punching down etc, I did take a couple of gravity readings, though what they're worth is only to monitor where the ferments have got to.

    So a couple of weeks ago, despite trying to follow Steve Krolls technique of leaving the grapes/skins in the ferments until they'd sunk, I was starting to be a little concerned and as I was finding time difficult to make, I eventually had to "bite the bullet" and press the grape skins etc.

    To add further to my error, after I'd pressed all my efforts, I neglected to make which is which, but I think that the large glass fermenter is pure tempranillo and the larger plastic one is almost pure merlot, but I might be wrong.

    When I pressed the grapes, the only one that had "sort of" stopped was a single box of tempranillo in a 10 litre bucket. The others were all hovering around the 1.020 mark. I wasn't sure if the ferments had actually completed or whether they were just not producing much, if anything in the way of fermentation activity. I suspect I guessed wrongly, because I've just tested them and they're all sitting at around the 1.000 mark.

    Now whether I measured wrongly or the yeast has exceeded it's tolerance (all the fresh grape ferments have used K1-V1116, because of it's high tolerance of 18% ABV, but also it's ability to fight off wild yeasts - plus it's a good yeast for meads anyway, especially for traditionals, and now, it seems, for fresh grape pyments).

    Just to clarify a little, as some might think ??? my alluding to the yeast exceeding it's tolerance, comes from the mead world. The excellent Lallemand yeast chart, lists all the base properties for the Lalvin, Uvaferm and Enoferm yeast ranges they produce. But it does seem, anecdotally at least, that with meads it's possible to exceed the published tolerance, the actual data, is, I understand, compiled from using grape musts, so whether this apparent phenomanon is a mead thing or whether it's about inaccurate measuring or something I don't know.

    Anyway, the grapefest ferments I've done, have proven to be very pleasing. At the moment, they taste like nice, rounded, "off-dry" red wines. Yes they're still dropping sediments and at the moment I haven't made my mind up how I'll progress with them. Because of my errors and mix ups, I'm of a mind to blend the lot together when it comes to racking off the lees. I'll wait and see.

    So is that 2 pyments or 1 ?

    The other bit, is that I also managed to get a 25 litre drum of Shiraz from that god of frozen grapes (Brian the Cellar Rat). They took 2 days for defrost completely, then I moved them to a fermenter and sulphited them and added Rohapect enzyme for a couple of days, before just dry pitching the yeast (again K1-V1116). This "lagged" for a couple of days, unsurpringly. I did measure the gravity this time, though only after I'd added 2kg of honey (the 2kg was based on the guesstimate, that the liquid levels of the ferment suggested that the 25 litres of pulp/skins/etc would have come from 4 boxes of the Shiraz grapes - don't know for certain, I'd have to ask Brian). On sampling/testing, the starting gravity was 1.122, which from the point of view of our masters approach is very high - actually, from the mead making world, it's high, but not excessively so.

    Todays check, has given me a gravity of 1.040 which is excellent news, so I've just added a further 1kg of honey to the bucket and stirred it in, so at the moment, it's sitting at 1.055, which, if I've read things correctly, would be a total drop of 137 points, if it gets to 1.000 in the end, or 18% plus about 4 points of residual sugar. Now if I've guessed correctly (or even close) to the original 25 litres of grape pulp being from 4 boxes of grape, then it would actually need a further 1kg of honey to keep in line with my efforts with the Grapefest 2012 batches. I'll see how the ferment is progressing in a couple of days.....

    Yet this all still has me thinking. Would it be a good idea to back sweeten a bit ? after all, I generally back sweeten my meads to about the 1.010 area, or maybe I should follow the "edicts of Sharpie" and chuck a couple of oak trees in ? Or even follow the ideas of the "Golden Sealed one" and make it into a "pymort" with some fortification and back sweetening ?

    Damn! I'm spoiled for choice is ideas...... I'm not one to follow set guide lines, I prefer a more "ad hoc" approach.

    Oh, and the attached pic is how my grapefest batches finished up. If nothing else, it's got me thinking that I'll need to track down more large glass fermenters, well ones of a 5 gallon sort of size anyway. I do have a couple of 54 litre carboys and a 34 litre carboy, but the 54's a ball breakingly heavy to lift when full and the 34 litre one isn't really big enough to handle it all.

    Hum ? Time for more thinking while I dig around ebay to see what's available........
    Attached Files
    Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy.

    Some blog ramblings
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