First mead (Joe's) - couple questions

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patrick767

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Hey all,
As will quickly be obvious, I'm a total neophyte with any kind of brewing. I decided to try a mead when I stumbled across the Joe's Ancient Orange Cinnamon Clove Mead recipe and realized it wouldn't require a lot of money for equipment. I'm very much into craft beer (plus the occasional mead) and it's pretty much inevitable that I'll get into brewing more in the future, but this is an easy, inexpensive start.

Now I have most of the ingredients and equipment, but I have a couple really basic questions.

On dissolving the honey in warm water, should I just use about equal parts water and honey? I don't even have to heat it up? And from there I'm supposed to put it in the 1 gallon carboy. Should I go buy a funnel to get it in there without making a mess?

The brewing store manager looked at me like I was nuts when I said the recipe says DON'T rack the mead. But it does say to put a small cloth filter over the end of your tube when you siphon out the mead. Small cloth filter? What do I use for that?

Finally, for my carboy, bottles, and other equipment, should I pick up any particular disinfectant or not worry about it for this little project and just wash everything out with a little soap?
 
No, you don't use equal parts honey and water. I believe the recipe calls for 3.5 lbs. of honey. That should be about 1.5 qts. I usually use about 1.25 qts. I put in the honey first, then the remainder of the ingredients, add about a quart of hot water, and then put my hand over the opening of the jug and shake like hell until the honey dissolves. Top up to the bottom of the neck with cold water, pitch the yeast and place the bung with the airlock.

You don't need a funnel. I look for the gallon glass jugs that have large mouths, though about half of mine have the narrower openings. Just pour carefully and use hot water to clean the outside if you do spill any honey or orange juice.

Rubberband a small piece of cloth over your siphon hose or cane to keep out the paticles. Racking would ordinarily take care of this problem but with JAO you don't rack.

StarSan is a good sanitizer but I've made many batches cleaning with only hot soapy water. A tablespoon of bleach in the gallon filled with water will work but be sure to rinse very, very well to get rid of any hint of bleach odor.
 
Thanks for the tips! I've perused the FAQ and it looks like it will be invaluable for future batches. Love the calculator. Thanks for explaining my basic equipment and dissolving questions, summersolstice. My recipe notes say dissolve first, then put it in the carboy, but your suggestion of just dumping everything into the carboy first makes more sense for this one.

I've got a slow day today, family gathering for thanksgiving is tomorrow, so I will give this thing a shot today. :)
 
Thanks for the tips!
I've got a slow day today, family gathering for thanksgiving is tomorrow, so I will give this thing a shot today. :)

You bet. Good luck and I know you'll enjoy it!

Just a couple of other things worthy of mention: After you put everything together, just put the jug in a warmest place in your house (JAO and Flieshman's yeast seems to like warmer temps) and cover it with a dish towel to keep out the light. Don't disturb it at all and forget about it for about three months.

When it clears (the fruit may drop or it may not) very carefully move it to where you plan to bottle it. The lees (sediment) in JOA are as fine as any I've ever seen and just a sneeze will get everything back into suspension and you have to wait another 2-3 months before it clears again. Very carefully keep your siphon hose or cane at least a couple of inches above the lees on the bottom to avoid sucking up the very fine dust-like lees. If you want to try to get every last drop, do it in the final bottle so the first bottles remain clear. One gallon should provide you with 5 750 ml wine bottles or about 10 crown capped beer bottles.
 
I would recommend buying some "cheese cloth" from your local grocery store, your find it in the baking section. I use that just because I can cut off a small piece, dip it in a sanitizer, (starting off a very light bleach solution works fine).
As everyone has said, you must give it a lot of time, heck you may be into full on homebrewing and enjoying a heck of a lot of beer before this mead is ready, but it will be worth it.
Best of luck and welcome to the forum.
 
Thanks again. I'll get some cheese cloth and try to be patient. My recipe printed off from gotmead.com says 2 months. Summersolstice, you're saying 3 months. I guess I'll just have to wait and see how long everything takes to ferment and settle. My first mead is in the cabinet with the yeasties bubbling away happily.
 
My recipe printed off from gotmead.com says 2 months. Summersolstice, you're saying 3 months. I guess I'll just have to wait and see how long everything takes to ferment and settle.

I've been a member at gotmead.com for 4-5 years and it's the best forum around as far as overall knowledge pertaining to mead. The JAO recipe was originally designed and posted there by another member, Joe Mattioli. He also designed another quick mead made with Welch's grape juice. I believe you'll find the recipe for it, along with JAO here in the recipe section.

I've made a couple of dozen of these meads in various configurations and I've never had one ready in two months. Some have taken as long as four months or more but three is about as early as I've seen them ready. It will depend a lot on the room temperature. As I said earlier, Flieshman's seems to like it warm - around 75F - 80F or so. It will ferment just as well at 65F, it just takes longer.
 
I've made a couple of dozen of these meads in various configurations and I've never had one ready in two months. Some have taken as long as four months or more but three is about as early as I've seen them ready. It will depend a lot on the room temperature. As I said earlier, Flieshman's seems to like it warm - around 75F - 80F or so. It will ferment just as well at 65F, it just takes longer.

Ok, I'll expect it to take longer then. We're hitting winter here in Indiana and nowhere in the house is 75-80 degrees now. That'd be too hard on the gas bill. :p
 
Well, I found a closet that's warmer than the cabinet where I had my mead. I moved it and the bubble rate noticeably increased, so that's good.

I noticed there's some crud around stuck to the inside of the glass at surface level. I assume it's just yeast and such. This won't mold or something and make it taste bad, will it? A friend of mine who's brewed some meads, ciders, and fruit wines became the latest person I've talked to who cringed at this recipe. He thinks no racking will mean it's going to taste moldy. Not sure where he's getting "moldy".

Between no racking and telling people it uses ordinary bread yeast, it's amusing to watch the horrified reactions. Then there's me saying, "but the people from the internet say it will work fine!" :ban:

Edit: by the way, can anyone tell me why 5-6 gallon batches are typical for beer/mead? I think I'd enjoy experimenting with many batches and obviously smaller batches would be more practical from a cost and consumption perspective. Do many brews not work as well in smaller amounts?
 
The stuff floating on the top edge is just by products of the fermentation, once it slows it will drop to the bottom with the other lees, dormant yeast etc.

Do you mean your friends don't believe everything they read on the internet? They seem to be a select few now days.

Brewing beer is rather standard at 5 and 10 gallon batchs because there reconditioned soda kegs come in 5 gallons, most carboys and ale pales etc are 5-7 gallons.

You can make any size you want, some people here do 3 gallon batch's. Just lower the volume, the less you get for your efforts.
 
It looks like my mead is coming along fine. I think it's stopped fermenting as the bubbling activity quit a few days ago. It's got just under 3 weeks before it hits the 2 month mark. There's a fair amount of sediment on the bottom, but at this point the mead is no ways near clear.

Given the lack of any racking for JAOM, how clear should I expect it to get before I call it done? I know my instructions say to use cloth (cheese cloth probably) over the end of the siphon to filter out the crud.
 
My instructions don't say to use cheesecloth, and I'd wait until it's clear before bottling. It'll get clear- like you can read a newspaper through it- if you wait a bit. I wouldn't use any kind of filter, just rack above the sediment when you rack it. I'd move it the night before, actually. I found that the JOAM made incredibly fine lees that just were so easily resuspended that it was better to not move it at all before racking.
 
My instructions don't say to use cheesecloth, and I'd wait until it's clear before bottling. It'll get clear- like you can read a newspaper through it- if you wait a bit. I wouldn't use any kind of filter, just rack above the sediment when you rack it. I'd move it the night before, actually. I found that the JOAM made incredibly fine lees that just were so easily resuspended that it was better to not move it at all before racking.

I copied my instructions from gotmead.com and there it says to use a strip of cloth over the siphon tube. It doesn't specify a type of cloth, but obviously it has to be something coarse enough to be able to get the siphon going through it.
 
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