Thoughts? (JAOM based recipe)

So first off, I have read the FAQs, and I am 90% sure what I have planned will be fine, but would just like that personal reassurance of "yes, it'll be fine". So I've been brewing beer only for a few months, but have kicked out 5 good batches (good as in, no infections, and they *gasp* taste like beer).

I'm now looking to try a mead and just need some quick clarification. I was looking at the Joe's Orange Ancient Mead post in the recipe forums, then saw malkore make some suggestions to tweak the recipe. I'd like to follow his/her tweaks, so I'll detail here what I plan to do. I welcome any critisim out there on this:

Yield: 3 gallons
9lbs Wildflower Honey
3 Large Oranges
2 Cinnamon Sticks
2 Whole Cloves
Wyeast Sweet Mead Yeast
Yeast energizer
Yeast nutrients

Boil 3 gallons of tap water for 15 minutes. I have a good amount of cholrine in my water, so with this step, I'd like to get most (some?) of that out. Should it boil longer for this?

Cool water (needed?)

Add water to honey, squeezed the orange juice, orange zest to my brewpot, steep for 10 minutes at 140F, then cool and strain it when you put it in the fermenter.

Add cloves, cinnamon, yeast to fermentor.

I expect you'll be fine.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f80/malkores-not-so-ancient-orange-mead-50201/
I'm planning something similar myself in a week or two.

Aww geeze, I never even saw that link.

Thanks!

BUT, It' looks good.

DuffmanAK said:

Boil 3 gallons of tap water for 15 minutes. I have a good amount of cholrine in my water, so with this step, I'd like to get most (some?) of that out. Should it boil longer for this?

Click to expand...

Boiling water won't get the chlorine out. If you leave the water you are going to use out, meaning no lid on it, the chlorine will be gone in 24 hours.

Then you can boil the water to make sure it is sterile. Make sure to aerate the mixture tho before you pitch the yeats.

Brandon O said:

Boiling water won't get the chlorine out. If you leave the water you are going to use out, meaning no lid on it, the chlorine will be gone in 24 hours.

Then you can boil the water to make sure it is sterile. Make sure to aerate the mixture tho before you pitch the yeats.

Click to expand...

Really... I thought that would pull the cholrine out, that could be why all my beers so far have a distinct flavor to them. It's not an all bad flavor, just this kindda.. I dunno, might even be a yeast bite to it. Hard to describe

Then again, maybe I'll just pickup some gallons of spring water form the grocery store.

With as hard of water as Fairbanks has I think you will be much happier if you buy spring water. We get the calcium buildup on everything here in Omaha too and I find that for most things bottled water is the way to go.

You might want to consider cutting your beer brewing water with distilled to knock the minerals down to a palatable level.

Would doing that be preferable to just going all-bottled (non-distilled) water?

A big jug of water form the store isn't too much.

It depends on if you are doing extracts or all grain. For all the years I did extract I just used bottled but when I went to all grain there is no way I wanted to haul that much bottled water around. I still use bottled for wines, mead, and cider. It just not worth using my hard, chloramined water.