Sour Mead suggestions

[chippermonky]

Hey everyone, my first post. I've been lurking and brewing for almost a year now though.

A while back I made a gallon batch of mead with a the juice of a single grapefruit, peel and juice of a cara cara orange and persimmon. Aged about 5 months, it was fantastic granted we drank it after going through 2 bottles of chuck .

But that was enough to convince me that mead and citrus were made to go with each other so I made another gallon batch with orange blossom honey and two grapefruits, skin, pith and juice. It came out much too bitter at first but I diluted with more water + honey and I think the bitterness is just right. Used EC-1118 yeast and still a little sweet. I'm actually really happy with how it tastes right now. Except...

The citrus flavor is just screaming lemon lime and bitters. Any suggestions on how to make this more sour? I though of squeezing some lemon/lime juice in it but that feels like I'm making a cocktail. Looking to bottle and age this for a bit.

 

[ColoHox]

I made a few 1gal test batches to try out some sweet/tart flavors. In one batch I used grapefruit, but just skin, juice and meat, and tried to remove as much pith as I could. In other batches the pith left a significant bitterness.

In another batch I removed a small sample and added lactic acid until it had the sweet/tart balance I was looking for, then added a proportional amount to the whole batch.

 

[chippermonky]

yeah, the entire pith was a mistake. It makes the mead taste like pith, not just bitter. I'm hoping that's just in my head/it will go away with age.

 

[MarshmallowBlue]

In my experience, Lemon pith is the only thing that can be put in water. I put blood oranges in some water to make a citrusy water (like lemon) and it turned out undrinkable.