Not Enough Fruit?

I haven't really given it much thought until now.

I recently started primary fermentation on a 5 gallon batch of JAOM.
I replaced the 5 oranges with 2 oranges, 1 grapefruit (fruit and zest), and 2 lemons (fruit and zest). I'm worried that somehow, the size of the lemons will affect my mead in ratio to the original recipe. Am I just being a hypochondriac?

You are really worrying about nothing. Combo sounds nice. Have you ever made the recipe as called for with no deviation?

Technically, no. The batch that I made was about 1 lb of honey for a half gallon batch, so it was very dry. Other than that, though, I did follow the recipe. Nice flavor, although a bit pithy. Letting it age out. Glad to know I'm worrying over nothing though :rockin:

Meadiator said:

Technically, no. The batch that I made was about 1 lb of honey for a half gallon batch, so it was very dry. Other than that, though, I did follow the recipe. Nice flavor, although a bit pithy. Letting it age out. Glad to know I'm worrying over nothing though :rockin:

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You can scale either way, just that the fruit to honey ratio still needs to be retained to prevent it being bitter/pithy. Which also happens if you substitute the bread yeast with wine yeast i.e. it ferments dry, focusing the flavour on the pith/bitterness as there's little/no residual sweetness to balance that.

I'd have thought that you're current batch will work fine, though whether there's any inherent taste issues from the grapefruit, I don't know. After all, there's some basic bitterness from the flesh of the fruit even though from memory the pith isn't as bitter as orange or lemon pith.....

Still, concur with saramc. It sounds like it should turn out fine, if the only change is the fruit and that the yeast is the same as well as the fruit and honey ratio.....