I bottled my JAOM on 4-20-2013. I drank what didn't fit into full bottles, so I finally got to taste this recipe and my first mead. More on that later. Here's my story.
I bought these ingredients from the grocery store.
I decided to make two batches with the same ingredients except that I would remove the pith from the orange for one of the gallons.
To ensure that one orange wasn't tastier than the other, I split the two oranges in half and put one half of each orange into each gallon. In the picture above you can see the skin that I've peeled off with a vegetable peeler, and I'm removing the pith underneath.
I didn't fill the carboys all the way up so that there would be plenty of head space.
You can see some foaming here. I forgot to take the specific gravity when I pitched it, but I tested it a few days later before filling up the head space, and I was very surprised to find that the two jugs had very different gravities.
Original JAOM: 1.148
No Pith JAOM: 1.112
My guess is that I didn't measure the honey correctly and put a bunch more into the jug for the original JAOM.
I filled most of the head space with spring water.
After 7 weeks, I moved the two carboys to my kitchen where I planned to bottle the mead. I moved them a week early so that any lees I kicked up would have a chance to settle.
As I was moving the two jugs, I learned something interesting. The first jug, I was careful to not slosh the contents around, but I did nothing to prevent rotating the jug as I turned corners in the house to get it from the fermentation room to the kitchen. Just in the few turns that I had to make, I noticed that the jug would turn, and some of the lees touching the sides of the jug would turn too, but most of the lees and liquid would stay still (conservation of angular momentum). The area where movement and non-movement met created turbulence, and that kicked up a bunch of the lees.
For the second carboy that I moved, I was careful to not rotate the jar as I moved through the house, instead twisting my body around the jug as I needed to turn. That jug kicked up almost no lees, which you can see the picture.
I waited another week before bottling. On bottling day, I tested the gravities again.
Original JAOM 1.051 (~12.7% ABV)
No Pith JAOM 1.042 (~9.2% ABV)
Note: if my notes are correct, the first gravities were taken before I added spring water to fill up the head space, so the volume was different than when I took the final gravities, and likely they were different in each jug; therefore, I suspect that my estimated ABV values above are too high.
I had only bottled one brew before this, so I didn't have much experience. I also had a friend helping me before, so it was my first solo bottling, but I had no trouble. Each carboy filled a little over four 750ml wine bottles.
I was careful to not kick up lees while bottling the first gallon, so you can see the bottles are clearer. I mistakenly kicked up some in the second gallon.
I drank the extras that night, and tried to taste the difference. One of my goals for these batches was to tell if the pith flavor was noticeable.
Both of them tasted like sweet mead. There was a strong orange flavor (more like the cooked orange of orange chicken, rather than a fresh orange), and the spices were definitely present (though the clove, allspice, and cinnamon overpowered the nutmeg). There was also a pretty strong "hot alcohol" flavor.
The original JAOM, pictured above, was the one that had less lees in the bottling, and it tasted better than the bottle with no pith; however, the flavors were extremely similar. It was more of "off flavors" that made the difference, and I guess that it was the lees that were causing the difference. Neither of them had a specific orange pith flavor. That may change as it ages.
The other differences between the two batches had more to do with the process of making and cleaning. Whole orange slices are much easier to prepare, but I lost some of the orange juice when squeezing the slices into the carboy. I didn't lose any juice inserting the slices with the skin and pith removed. When cleaning, it was easier to get the orange remains out from the jug where the pith was removed, because the peel was a separate item that was easy to get a grip on, and the orange pulp was a little smaller and fit through the neck of the jug. I had to work harder to get the whole orange slices out of the jugs.
I'm very interested to taste them again after they have aged a while. I now understand why so many people say you should age your mead before drinking it. I certainly enjoyed getting to finally taste the mead I had been working on, but it is not ready to share yet.