JAOM - are the oranges and rasins meant to go white and sticky?

I have two different one gallon batches of JAOM going. I pretty much did as the recipe dictates. After 2 weeks there is still airlock activity (1 bubble / min).

However, I have also noticed that the floating oranges and raisins have a lot of white build up on them. It looks a bit like a yeast cake (I am hoping it is yeast?). Is this normal? I looked at some pictures on the forums but couldn't find any showing this.

Is it foamy? My last JAOM batch had some scary-looking white foam on top for a while that wound up being very small, very long-lived CO2 bubbles.

A few weeks later and it was completely gone and tasting amazing.

-Rich

I had the same thing as Rich happen to me. Turned out fine. Is it a filmy layer, or just bubbles? You could try posting a picture if you can. We might be able to help more that way.

One of the reasons for allowing the fruit to drop with JAO, is that the fruit will collect yeast while it's brewing, and that when it comes to racking/siphoning/bottling, bread yeast is a bastard for not flocculating very well, and being very easy to disturb and bring it back into suspension.

I usually just mix a batch up, then leave it completely alone until the fruit has dropped - at most, if I'm making them in 1 gallon jars/carboys/demi-johns, I may mix the batch so the liquid level is up to the shoulders of the container, then after a week or two, I top it up to the neck of the container.

On the other hand, my glassware is (naturally) 1 imp gallon capacity/4.55 litres and not 1 US gallon (3.78 litres), so my batches wouldn't be quite as sweet, but they still come out fine......

Hence, with Lumo's batch(es ?) it will likely come out fine and the white deposits are probably just yeast - does the gas from the airlock smell bad ? if not i.e. it just smells of honey/fruit/alcohol etc and no vinegar or rotten egg/H2S then it shouldn't be a problem....

I had the same thick white foam on top of my fruit. I just shook it up gently from side to side. the foam washed into the mead and is looking great. Like Fatbloke said, as long as it smells like fruit, honey, and alcohol, it should turn out good.

I tried shaking it gently as suggested and the fruit has indeed cleared up a lot, looks good now. The one airlock I could smell had an alcahol-yeast-spice-citrus aroma.