Years ago I remember reading something about being able to use grapes to make a 2nd run wine by adding sugar water to the skins after racking off the first run wine.
Now, I am wondering if you will get favorable results if you do this when making a pyment?
I had a couple pounds of Catawba grapes this year, and made a gallon of Catawba pyment from them. I racked the wine off the grapes tonight. However, the skins are still in the primary fermention bucket.
I have another mead going, and I can drain off a gallon or so of it and put it on the skins if this might give me a good result.
If this is not worth doing, I really don't want to waste good mead.
So, does anybody have any ideas about this. People on the meadmaking group don't seem to know much about second run wines, so I figured I would ask here. (They know how to make the first run Pyments, but they don't know if the second run is worth doing or not.)
I have never done it so can't speak from experience.
Second run wines are usually pretty thin on taste and are often distilled into Grappa which is not very tasty either in my opinion.
Catawba around here is a high acid grape that can take a lot of watering so you may get away with it though. It's only a few pounds of honey so it's not an expensive catastrophe if it doesn't work out.
I would do as you stated, don't use sugar, use honey for the fermentables. As long as you don't have crushed seeds I can't see any ill effects; but I would taste it along the way too to know when to get rid of the skins. It may not add much flavor, I just don't know.
I only have enough grapes for a gallon or so. The first I added a gallon of mead, and with what the angels share I only ended up with
3/4 gallon. So I figure if I add about 1.5 gallons, I should be okay. I actually have two meads going right now. A sweet clover honey mead, and a dry clover honey mead (two different yeasts). The one that was on the grapes before was a really light sweet blended honey.
So, I am not sure if I should mix the yeasts, or stick with the sweet mead.
I really don't do much with fruit, normally just straight mead. However, someone gave me a really, really nice honey that just said... this needs to be made into melomels about 3 months ago. It was also getting into fall, and I had a couple pounds of these grapes on my vine.
Another friend had raspberries ... only enough for a couple of gallons...
So I ended up splitting this really nice, light honey up into six different one gallon batches with different fruits.
When I planted these catawba grapes in 1993 I had planted 5 vines thinking I would make wine from them. Only one vine survived. So I have a few grapes each year. Between what the magpies get, and what my wife gets.... I normally get between 2-4 lbs a year off the vine.
Back when I planted these vines in 1993 I did remember something about
2nd run wines. So I thought I would ask about if I might get something drinkable with a second run off of the grapes.
I don't have crushed seeds. I just sort of threw the grapes in and mashed them up and let them sit for a month.
What started out going to be a mead went from a really light yellow honey color to a rose honey color. It is fairly sweet. It tastes fairly nice, but it is really sweet. Sweeter then a traditional sweet mead. It still needs some time to ferment a bit, and that will take care of some of that.
So, I am not really sure if I should add the sweet clover honey, or the dry clover honey. I also have a stronger, dark mead going. However, that would just kill the flavor of the grapes in a second run pyment.
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