Did I screw up adding an orange?

I have a gallon of mead I threw an orange in during primary about a day after the yeast really started going. I read a post at that time where someone said to just chop the orange up and throw the whole thing in, so I did.

Six months later the mead tastes like the nasty white part of the orange peel. Will this go away with more age? Its kind of weird tasting now, and I'm pretty sure it would have tasted much better without the orange peel in it.

With the white part left on then you have a large amount of bitter added from it. Aging will help and it will fade a little bit. But the thing that will help best is to back sweeten a good bit. You may want a gravity of about 1.02 - 1.026 to help mask the pithy bitterness.

That's why JAO isnt good made with wine yeast, all the normal residual sugars have been used up.

Arpolis has hit the nail on the head......

Back sweeten to JAO levels and then let it age some.

I did backsweeten when I sampled some. It is losing the rocket-fuel/cough-syrup flavors, so i started adding a little sugar to see if I could make it any better...

Well after adding what I thought was a little sugar I took a sample. It is now ~1.040. It doesn't even taste that sweet. I guess the orange bitterness is overpowering the sugar that much. I'll let it age a few more months and see what happens. I'm kind of pissed that I did something so dumb.

I hate JAOM because of the pith astringency.
Age will help a LOT! Put it away for six months to a year and then taste it again.