I am about to make two one gallon batches of JAOM but have a few questions. I read everywhere that its bitter at first from the white orange pith. What can I do to prevent that ? I was thinking of zesting the entire orange then removing the pith, then adding the fruit of the orange. Anyone else have a good work around ?
No, if you read the thread(s)/posts correctly you will note that just sticking to the recipe as written doesn't give you bitterness.
The whole point of the method is to give a new mead maker an easy method and ingredients list so they can get all the stuff and just follow the method. Ending up with a batch that is sweet, tastes good, is easy/straight forward to make and gives an easily repeatable result.
The ones that come out bitter from the pith, will have been modified in some way, often in a way that will ferment the batch dry, which will focus the flavour on the bitterness inherent in the pith.
Now if you wanted to make a non-JAO orange mead you could still make a batch using those same proportions, but zesting the orange and then segmenting the flesh from the inner skin would remove any possible bitterness but most likely leaving something that is overly sweet with a higher level of orange taste i.e. syrupy orange.
In the original recipe the bitterness is balanced by the residual sugars allowing the orange and spices to give the correct levels of flavouring. Take one part away and it becomes unbalanced.
Your mead, your choice......
Just don't be surprised if it has problems or issues somewhere in the making or resultant mead......
