Perky Py Red Grape Pyment with Coffee
Mead made with grapes is called a pyment. This pyment has coffee in it. Hence the name Perky Py. How much caffeine is in that? Not much. The small amount of coffee in this means if you drank enough for the caffeine to effect you, you’d probably have much bigger problems from that much alcohol. Huuuge problems like flawless dance moves and razor sharp wit.
We took some organic wildflower honey and Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Syrah grapes and let the yeast work their magic. We’re talking about real crushed grapes too, not juice or concentrates or whatever stuff other people are trying to sneak past us these days. The result was, well, underwhelming. The earthy honey didn’t mesh well with the grape flavor, and depression began to set in. What am I supposed to do with this? I certainly couldn’t just bottle it and sell it to people with a straight face.
The answer, it turns out, is to add something to complement that earthy flavor, which in this case was cold brew coffee. Just the addition of some coffee caused an amazing transformation that turned this into a complex yet easy sipping mead. It is off-dry with just a bit of sweetness left from the grapes that didn’t want to ferment. I think the yeast were on vacation. They really do whatever they want and we don’t get a choice. It’s in their contract, go read it. People say the flavors shouldn’t work together but for some reason they do. Did I make some kind of crossroads deal with a demon or am I just lucky? You’ll never know.
Oh and if you notice, on this label the bee has a pork pie hat on, which I thought was quite clever since pork pie and perky py sound similar. I was probably sipping some of this mead when I came up with that hat idea. The razor sharp wit is real.