Joe's Ancient Orange Mead

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If you backsweeten and bottle, I recommend to stabilize (sorbate and sulfite) because the sugar addition will dilute the alcohol.
 
Another #3002 posts down.. This is the easiest to put together by far.. 1.5kg local wildflower honey - it was pretty wet\fresh easy to pour - added a touch of hot water to the jars shook for the rest.. I probably used a little too much oranges.. 2 smaller? oranges - cut a few more times then 8ths.. I pealed the last half orange to flesh and chucked it in.. Other then that its to spec.. Pitched some bread yeast.. Fermenting under the kitchen sink.. I expect its going to be pretty orangey the first yearish.. Hope it mellows nicely..

I saw somebody else mention you can wild ferment this - just by adding water and letting the natural yeast take over in the raw honey?
 
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I just made this mead and I tried it green while I was bottling it. It was definately green but it tastes good. I will made this recipe again but I will make Elderberry Rose Hip wine next. I am trying to be healthy.
 
I shook mine. Im terrible at reading and skim read everything... Helpp
No harm done, the instructions are written to tell people they don’t need to. Once fermentation starts, you can stir or swirl the batch to degas it and help the yeast along, but not necessarily.
 
I was thinking of trying this for my first attempt at Mead. Would someone beable to quantify how much water is needed to dissolve the honey?
 
I was thinking of trying this for my first attempt at Mead. Would someone beable to quantify how much water is needed to dissolve the honey?
Anything that would not leave way too much sugar will dissolve. If I am making a batch of any mead I weigh the honey for the desired SG and add to my pot. I then add warm water to the desired gal amount and start stirring. Once the honey is off the bottom I may add heat to help it dissolve but never let it get very hot.

It is possible to dissolve a 50/50 by volume mix of honey and water but the SG would be so high the result would be sickly sweat.
 
Anything that would not leave way too much sugar will dissolve. If I am making a batch of any mead I weigh the honey for the desired SG and add to my pot. I then add warm water to the desired gal amount and start stirring. Once the honey is off the bottom I may add heat to help it dissolve but never let it get very hot.

It is possible to dissolve a 50/50 by volume mix of honey and water but the SG would be so high the result would be sickly sweat.

So I am assuming you would suggest a less then 50/50 ratio? Since the recipe only says some warm water? If I am planning to use exatly 3.5 pounds of honey what would you suggest in terms of water?
 
So I am assuming you would suggest a less then 50/50 ratio? Since the recipe only says some warm water? If I am planning to use exatly 3.5 pounds of honey what would you suggest in terms of water?
When I make 5 gallons of mead I use 15 pounds of honey, I use EC 1118 yeast and ferment it out dry, after fermentation is complete I add potassium metasuphite to kill off the yeast and then back sweeten.
 
I was thinking of trying this for my first attempt at Mead. Would someone beable to quantify how much water is needed to dissolve the honey?

If this is your first attempt at a mead, why not do a SMALL volume first?

* 3.5 lbs (or a bit less) honey (warmed slightly so it . will pour)

  • 1 large orange (add zested rined, mashed flesh and . juice, discard white part of peel)
  • 1 about 25 raisins
  • 1 small stick cinnamon
  • 1 whole small clove
  • 1 pinch nutmeg or allspice (very small)
  • 1 package Fleishmann’s bread yeast (I often use brewers yeast also, slightly different flavour)
  • water to 1 gallon (temperature doesn't matter)
  • few tablespoons of black tea liquid
  • in a container that is bigger than 1 gallon (it may bubble up a bit)
  • put lid on and shake to aerate, add bubbler
  • allow to ferment in a dark room temperature area for a month or two. leave it alone. ready to bottle when the fruit sinks and no more bubbles. time not crucial. just let it be
  • bottle and wait 3 months (or taste a bit once a week just to learn how it mellows)
  • should be drinkable at about 3-4 months
just remember...this is a beginner's recipe.. keep it simple
 
@rlmiller10 @Davedrinksbeer @amber-ale
I believe he's asking how much water is needed to make one gallon of mead.

Approximately 0.71 gallons of water (not accounting for the volume of fruit, which is unknown).

The honey will "dissolve" with less water, but it's already fluid so there's no definitive amount needed; any amount of water can be mixed with honey.
 
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Thanks for the input everyone. I also think I was misinterpreting the original directions. When it says dissolve honey in some warm water I am now reading it as a warm water bath and not dissolving honey with water over a stove
 
Wow, first attempt and made one gallon original recipe and one gallon with frozen wild blue berries from Walmart added. The blueberry recipe was AMAZING and drinkable on first day of bottling! Not sure of abv but it seemed stronger than my wine kits and would guess 14-15%? Will let the original recipe age in bottles a few months. Did a second batch today with dark sweet cherries added as an additional ingredient and used blood oranges instead of the naval. This turned out so well I don’t even want to try the more complicated non beginner recipes!
 
So after two months it was a bit cloudy, but bottled anyways. Any suggestions for the future? I added carbonation tablets to it so we will see if it carbs.
 
Anything that would not leave way too much sugar will dissolve. If I am making a batch of any mead I weigh the honey for the desired SG and add to my pot. I then add warm water to the desired gal amount and start stirring. Once the honey is off the bottom I may add heat to help it dissolve but never let it get very hot.

It is possible to dissolve a 50/50 by volume mix of honey and water but the SG would be so high the result would be sickly sweat.
rlmiller10 , you say that you weigh the honey for the desired SG..
can you or anyone please explain how to go about this..
Is there a formula I can use?
Thank you
 
Did you crush the blueberries prior to adding them or just add them whole?
I would freeze, thaw, then crush. Add some pectic enzyme and let sit a day or two, then add.
So after two months it was a bit cloudy, but bottled anyways. Any suggestions for the future? I added carbonation tablets to it so we will see if it carbs.
for the future let it sit till it's clear. Then bottle.
 
rlmiller10 , you say that you weigh the honey for the desired SG..
can you or anyone please explain how to go about this..
Is there a formula I can use?
Thank you
Sorry for the delay in answering. We have been moving so getting to HBT has been lagging.

Anyhow, I use 33 points per lb. Might be a little more, might be a little less but it is a good approximation. Then the formula lb = (desired volume X desired SG in points)/33 Example for a 5 gal batch with a target SG of 1.090

# = (5 X 90)/33 = 13.6 lb
 
Sorry for the delay in answering. We have been moving so getting to HBT has been lagging.

Anyhow, I use 33 points per lb. Might be a little more, might be a little less but it is a good approximation. Then the formula lb = (desired volume X desired SG in points)/33 Example for a 5 gal batch with a target SG of 1.090

# = (5 X 90)/33 = 13.6 lb
Thank you,this helps alot
 
hey y’all i’m new to brewing stuff. i’ve made up a batch the other day, in a gallon jug of distilled water and i have 3 questions. 1) after the 2 month mark do i move it into some glass bottles? 2) when i move the mead into the bottle do i put some of the ingredients into the bottle as well? 3) would it be dangerous if i kept the ingredients from this brew for future brews?
 
Hi, welcome to HBT!
1) after the 2 month mark do i move it into some glass bottles?
Yes, if it's fully clear. Be very gentle when transferring because the yeast sediment is easily disturbed.

2) when i move the mead into the bottle do i put some of the ingredients into the bottle as well?
No.

3) would it be dangerous if i kept the ingredients from this brew for future brews?
Not "dangerous", but there's no reason to save anything used in the mead. Use fresh ingredients each time.
 
This one has me baffled. I have made one or two batches of this every year for 8 or 9 years. Always acted like it should. This batch will not clear. It is 6 months old. I took a sample and the bread yeast was a monster. Final gravity 1.010, giving an 11% ABV. I even tried cold crashing and sparkaloid to no avail. Going to go ahead and bottle and see if it develops sludge in the bottle in a year or two.
 
This one has me baffled. I have made one or two batches of this every year for 8 or 9 years. Always acted like it should. This batch will not clear. It is 6 months old. I took a sample and the bread yeast was a monster. Final gravity 1.010, giving an 11% ABV. I even tried cold crashing and sparkaloid to no avail. Going to go ahead and bottle and see if it develops sludge in the bottle in a year or two.
I would add some K meta to be sure the yeast is dead, then I would rack it a few times. I know the recipie says don't, but desperate times call for desperate measures. This has happened to me too. Not with this particular recipie but another fresh fruit wine recipie.
 
This one has me baffled. I have made one or two batches of this every year for 8 or 9 years. Always acted like it should. This batch will not clear. It is 6 months old. I took a sample and the bread yeast was a monster. Final gravity 1.010, giving an 11% ABV. I even tried cold crashing and sparkaloid to no avail. Going to go ahead and bottle and see if it develops sludge in the bottle in a year or two.
I’d give it more time, as in bulk aging. Then it will be clear for bottling if that’s what you want.
 
Hi all! I thought I might try making this as my first ever brew. I have three questions:
1. I just noticed that the raisins I get in my grocery stores list 'sunflower oil' under the ingredients. Are these still suitable? And preferably they should be 'unsulphited'?
2. Can I use any other 'normal' bread yeast? Specifically, Dr. Oetker's or Haas? They don't have to be proofed for baking, thus they're instant yeasts, vs Fleischman's active dry yeast? - which isn't available here in Austria. As another alternative, we have fresh yeast in most grocery stores.
3. My room temperature is now 18-19 C (65-67F), and will sink to a stable 15C (60F) by mid December. Joe's instructions do say that the brew likes 21-26C temperatures. How high is the possibility that this recipe won't work at my temperatures? Or might it just ferment reaaaally slow (I can wait, if success is more or less guaranteed)? Should I just give up on this and try another recipe that uses ale yeast instead (JAO BOMM)?
 
Hi all! I thought I might try making this as my first ever brew. I have three questions:
1. I just noticed that the raisins I get in my grocery stores list 'sunflower oil' under the ingredients. Are these still suitable? And preferably they should be 'unsulphited'?
2. Can I use any other 'normal' bread yeast? Specifically, Dr. Oetker's or Haas? They don't have to be proofed for baking, thus they're instant yeasts, vs Fleischman's active dry yeast? - which isn't available here in Austria. As another alternative, we have fresh yeast in most grocery stores.
3. My room temperature is now 18-19 C (65-67F), and will sink to a stable 15C (60F) by mid December. Joe's instructions do say that the brew likes 21-26C temperatures. How high is the possibility that this recipe won't work at my temperatures? Or might it just ferment reaaaally slow (I can wait, if success is more or less guaranteed)? Should I just give up on this and try another recipe that uses ale yeast instead (JAO BOMM)?
Since you are not worried about head I would not worry about sunflower oil on the raisins, but I have no idea why they put sunflower oil on raisins.

I don't know those brands of yeast but they should work. Yeast wants to eat sugars. All bread yeast is from the same family.

I suspect you will get a slow fermentation and perhaps an early end with with 15C. Just think how bread would do at those temps. But if the first couple of weeks are 19 or so you should be OK. My last batch was in a 68f degree room and it did fine.
 
Since you are not worried about head I would not worry about sunflower oil on the raisins, but I have no idea why they put sunflower oil on raisins.

I don't know those brands of yeast but they should work. Yeast wants to eat sugars. All bread yeast is from the same family.

I suspect you will get a slow fermentation and perhaps an early end with with 15C. Just think how bread would do at those temps. But if the first couple of weeks are 19 or so you should be OK. My last batch was in a 68f degree room and it did fine.

Thanks for answering! I seldom bake but read that bread yeast do better at warmer temps. I'll just try the recipe soon with the stuff I've got then, for half a gallon in case it doesn't turn out. Hopefully the temperature won't sink too quickly.
 
I haven't made this since probably 2011 or 2012. Too much other stuff going on in my life.

I thought I remembered the recipe. Decided I better look it up anyway (in case I forgot something). And I found out that it has been almost 12 years (minus two days) since I made my first batch using @Yooper 's recipe.

Assembled my first batch last night. Two actually. Followed Yoop's recipe.

Has anyone had luck making three or five gal batches?

I followed Yoop's recipe and I was wondering what type of ingredient modifications had to be made rather than multiplying everything by three or five?

So now I have a new 3 gallon batch bubbling in my kitchen.

20201017 JOAM.jpg


Now I just have to be patient and forget about it for a couple of months.

I'm glad to see this thread is alive and well after all this time.
 
I have made JAOM the past couple of summers for the holidays, but not this summer. The batches have been so cloyingly sweet it's not so good to me. Some folks like it, most think it's way too sweet like me. First batch I went by the recipe. If I remember correctly OG was around 1.125 and finished in the mid 1.020s...

The next couple of batches I cut the honey back each time expecting it to be much better, but the yeast crapped out early and left me close to 1.020 FG again. I gave up. I've actually been working on some frozen juice concentrate wines the past several months in 1 gallon test batches and baker's yeast. It seems the bakers yeast the last few batches has been a pretty predictable .090 gravity drop. Maybe I'll give the mead another go and make sure I don't start above 1.100
 
You don't treat JAOM as a novelty mead? Was it ever supposed to be viewed as a serious wine? The whole thing is made counter-intuitively. If you routinely make wines and mead (or brew beers) why would you make a JAOM? You have as much control over the process as you do if you are in a car being driven at night with no lights and no brakes and you are sitting in the back seat with the one behind the wheel, legally blind and the one whose foot is on the gas pedal sitting in the passenger seat in the middle of a snow storm with no working wipers.
 
You don't treat JAOM as a novelty mead? Was it ever supposed to be viewed as a serious wine? The whole thing is made counter-intuitively. If you routinely make wines and mead (or brew beers) why would you make a JAOM? You have as much control over the process as you do if you are in a car being driven at night with no lights and no brakes and you are sitting in the back seat with the one behind the wheel, legally blind and the one whose foot is on the gas pedal sitting in the passenger seat in the middle of a snow storm with no working wipers.
But it sure is fun :)
 
You don't treat JAOM as a novelty mead? Was it ever supposed to be viewed as a serious wine? The whole thing is made counter-intuitively. If you routinely make wines and mead (or brew beers) why would you make a JAOM? You have as much control over the process as you do if you are in a car being driven at night with no lights and no brakes and you are sitting in the back seat with the one behind the wheel, legally blind and the one whose foot is on the gas pedal sitting in the passenger seat in the middle of a snow storm with no working wipers.
I'm not sure who is treating it as something other than a novelty mead or who you are referring to, but both meads and wines are novelty to me. My beers are good...my wines/meads are fun experiments that happen to taste decent and cost about as much money and time as what making kool-aid requires.
 
I just did this with one mod. It zested peel of the orange, thew away white stuff to get rid off bitterness and cut orange into smaller peaces which went inside. Basically just got rid off white stuff. Poured some black tea inside as well.

OG is at 1.134 so abv around 17%
 
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I just did this with one mod. It zested peel of the orange, thew away white stuff to get rid off bitterness and cut orange into smaller peaces which went inside. Basically just got rid off white stuff. Poured some black tea inside as well.

OG is at 1.134 so abv around 17%
Please let us know how that comes out? I suspect it will be very sweet as I have only been able to get the bread yeast up to about 11% (and usually closer to 8%) before they peter out.
 
A finish of 1.004 might be just right for this if it does go all the way to 17%...If I could get one to finish in the 1.010 +/- I'd be happy...just not 1.020 and above
 
Cool. We'll see how it goes. I'm not really shooting for any abv. If it's sweet, whatever it come out, ill be happy. :)
 
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