Pyment

5 gallons

Ingredients:

• 6 lbs. orange blossom honey
• 1 96-oz. can Chenin Blanc grape juice concentrate (or your choice of other wine-grape juice)
• 4 large pomegranates
• 10 kiwi fruit
• Juice of 2 oranges
• 8 tsp acid blend
• 0.25 teaspoon sulfite
• 1.5 tsp tannin
• 2 tsp pectic enzyme
• 2.5 teaspoons potassium sorbate
• 7.5 to 9 ounces of sugar for final sweetening
• Wine yeast of choice

Step-by-step:

Dissolve honey in enough warm water to bring volume to just over six gallons. Add rest of ingredients except sulfite, pectic enzyme, fruit and yeast. Remove 1 cup of must and heat it to 80° F, pitch yeast into cup of warm must. Add sulfite to the 6 gallons of must and cover. After 12-24 hours add the cup of fermenting mead starter to the 6 gallons of must and stir well.

Cover and fit airlock. Check must in 24 hours and stir, then add fruit and pectic enzyme to must. Ferment mead to dryness or near dryness and rack to secondary container. You may add a common fining agent if mead is dry at this racking, or allow the mead to clear naturally. Rack mead again in 3-4 weeks, and then again in 4-6 weeks (add a pinch of sulfite at each racking).

Allow mead to clear and age for 4-6 months. For final sweetening 2 to 2.5% residual sugar is suggested. Dissolve 2.5 teaspoons of potassium sorbate in a small bit of water, and stir into the mead. Add the sweetening sugar. If mead is at room temperatures, you can stir the sugar right into the mead. If mead is at cooler temperatures, remove 2-3 cups of the mead and heat it to 80° F in a sanitized pan, and dissolve your sugar in this. Add to mead and stir. Wait several days before bottlin