Help fixing a JAOM

[Berol]

Put together a 1 gallon batch of JAOM in August, my wife loved it. She asked me to make a bigger batch.

1 Gallon batch recipe:
3.5 pounds of wildflower honey
1 orange, sliced
1 cinnamon stick
1 clove
20 raisins
water to 1 gallon
bread yeast
Let it ride for 2 months.

On January 1st, I made a 4 gallon batch.
Recipe, scaled on 4x scale, with the following exceptions:
Organic oranges
Pectic enzyme

After I started the batch, I finally got around to eating one of the oranges from the bag of oranges I bought - it tasted very bitter, almost like grapefruit.

Fast forward in time - I racked the 4 gallon batch out of primary and into three 1-gallon secondaries and threw them into a fridge to cold crash them on 3/10. Unfortunately, It tasted like grapefruit juice and pith, just like the fruit did.

I sampled some last night - and it still tastes like grapefruit, with a strong taste of citrus pith.

Any thoughts on working the bitter & pithy taste out? I tried to sweeten a sample last night, it helped, but it almost made it too sweet but still pithy. Just let it age? Blend it into another beverage? Some other adjunct, like vanilla, oak, etc?

Appreciate any help.

 

[Maylar]

Bitter is hard to fix. A normal JAOM improves tremendously in 8-10 months. Some of the bitterness fades. All you can do is wait.

 

[MightyMosin]

I don't have a great answer but I'd try blending it with another mead to see how that goes. Use small measured amounts of each and see if you can get a decent taste out o fit. If you can, you can blend the batch by scaling up your smaller test amounts.

The flavor of the pith is one that I haven't dealt with... now as far as sweetening to go against the grapefruit flavor and it being too sweet: Take some of the bit you sweetened and try a few grains of sea salt in it. While it won't taste like what you were shooting for it just might balance your grapefruit vs too sweet taste. If it is a taste that you like, have very specific measured amounts that you use in testing so you can scale it up. I'd creep up on the sea salt amounts as you aren't going to get it out if you go too far.

 

[DBhomebrew]

JAOMs skip the nutrients, uses bread yeast, the citrus pith, etc, etc. All the shortcuts are in the inputs. If you want good mead out of it, you've got to give it time.

Newer protocols such as BOMM or TOSNA don't need a lot of time to be tasty, but with those you must be very careful and particular with the inputs.

Time. It'll do a JAOM good.

 

[bushpilot]

Time, as suggested, will probably help. And if that doesn't work, blending is a good option.

I wonder what oak would do for it?

Otherwise, I don't know what to do with bitter ...

 

[Dan O]

For JAOM, as said previously, time is your friend. Put it in a dark corner somewhere that you'll forget about it for @ least 8 months & it will be a totally different mead when you discover it again. In the meantime, make a different mead, using modern-day practices & you'll have something drinkable much sooner without having to age nearly half that time.
Here's a link to some good reading material for you to get caught up on modern-day practices. Use these methods & you will step up your mead game considerably.
https://www.youtobrew.com/mead-making-101
I hope this helps you.
Happy meading

 

[amber-ale]

Yes I agree
Bottle and let age. Taste every 6 months. You would be very surprised how the flavour will change. I once kept a coffee mead for 5 years before it was good ( then it was VERY good).
Try making a sweet/semisweet mead and try mixing a sample of each to see what you get.
Try you JOAM again but use an ale yeast and only use the juice/fruit and zest of the orange. It will mellow to tasty. Much faster with out the bitter pith flavour (but remember not to make a sweet mead because you have now unbalanced the sweet/bitter flavours)
One you are confident doing a modified JOAM, try a BOMM. Much faster, but also pickier and needs more attention.

Experiment and have fun. Try smaller half batches (2.5 gallon 10 litre batches)