Just wanted to say thanks to Yoop for being an awesome contributor to this forum!
Last night I made my first batch ever based on this recipe. I used one navel orange (zest and meat...tried to remove as much pith as possible), 3.5lbs orange blossom honey, 25 raisins, one cinnamon stick, and one clove.
Steeped the ingredients in ~70oz of water at 140-150* for 10 mins. Didn't account for the volume of honey and when I poured it into the carboy there was maybe 1-1.5" of room. Hopefully the fermentation doesn't get too crazy! Pitched in some D47 instead of bread yeast and there was already activity in the airlock this morning.
My only concern is that this is going to end up being very sweet...I measured an OG of 1.150
Might have to brew a drier batch to blend in with this one...what do you guys think?