Jao The Ultimate Beginners Mead Recipe

[pdilley]

citymorgue2,

Do you have your starting gravity handy?

1060 is a high finish but JAO is normally a high finish in the 36-42 point ranges usually so you are not far off. Just would like to shed 20 more points. If you have been tracking the ferment and hit a brick wall with the yeast check the pH as with moovets mead if your yeast is performing fine but all of a sudden hits a wall before normal tolerance levels it's usually a dip below 3.5, and a buffer that precipitates out readily is called for. You can pitch more yeast or even build up a nice starter but if it hits low pH it will pfaff out on you the same.

If you know volumetric additions you can pull off a sample amount and add some water to bring it down in gravity and have a taste test. If too much water is required you'll end up diluting flavour as well so better to see what state your ferment is in and see if you can adjust it to make it pull down on it's own.

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[pdilley]

The JOA mead is a great first recipe.
This is my JOAM after 2 months and some clearing

Looking very clear and nice there.

I'm seeing some full fermenters I think the top up with water section of the instructions is to blame as 3.89 litres is below a full fermenter and the top up with water is standard for any krausen that may be so large it causes losses in the fermenter. With JAO it's not a worry nor top ups needed but with nutrient addition meads its so active you can get very exciting foaming action during stirring.

You'll dilute some flavour/sweetness and alcohol by going over 3.89 liters but it should still be a good first go.

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[pdilley]

Thanks for this thread ^_^

Just thought I'd better sign the register.

I am just drinking my first JAOM and am hooked.

Cheers

It's a great drink in brewing to get hooked on!

Enjoy your JAO and be sure to make lots more because it won't last long!

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[brettprevans]

BP - OG was the same as ur 25L batch (actually a little more as I used about 0.5L more honey). I'll take an sg and c how we go. No ph capability as yet.

 

[gareth]

Hey Brewer Pete,

Been about 2.5 months and the fruit its still at the top but the mead is crystral clear, is it time to bottle?
What should the FG be?

Cheers
Gareth

 

[pdilley]

As above, high 30's to low 40's for finish gravity for JAO.

CM2, the OG should be around 1.126 and 12% should pull it down to just under 17 1/2 on Measured Brixor about 1.037 or so. 1060 will give you just above 20 1/2 Measured Brix and only 8.8% alcohol so you have a 3% gap in your ABV. Stopping there means something such as going too acidic in the must halted yeast metabolism early.

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[Maeldric]

Made this mead last year ready for christmas. Was freakin nice but havent made it again. Well today that changes. Heading to coles right now to get some ingredients for this wonderful mead. Gonna make a couple of batches of it this time so it lasts a little longer hehe.

 

[pdilley]

Made this mead last year ready for christmas. Was freakin nice but havent made it again. Well today that changes. Heading to coles right now to get some ingredients for this wonderful mead. Gonna make a couple of batches of it this time so it lasts a little longer hehe.

Bloody good drink that JAO isn't it!

Best advice as you are saying is make more as it just will not last.

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[brettprevans]

As above, high 30's to low 40's for finish gravity for JAO.

CM2, the OG should be around 1.126 and 12% should pull it down to just under 17 1/2 on Measured Brixor about 1.037 or so. 1060 will give you just above 20 1/2 Measured Brix and only 8.8% alcohol so you have a 3% gap in your ABV. Stopping there means something such as going too acidic in the must halted yeast metabolism early.

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

hmmm some ph strips may be needed. or ill just decide that its too acid and throw something in there to make it a bit more alkaline. any ideas? I would normally say some 5.2stabiliser. although cant say ive ever read it being used during fermentation.

Ill dig out the meadmakers book tonight and have a squiz.

 

[pdilley]

Calcium carbonate is normally recommended because it will precipitate out of solution easily. 1/2 to 1 tsp at a time for small batches, but your large batch will require considerably larger additions to move the pH.

You really want a pH closer to about 4 with 4.7 as a safe upper end. Some people will let it go as low as 3.7 and still feel comfortable, others have 3.8 as their lower limit. Honeys can be 3.9 to start with and yeast metabolism drives it all acid so its no wonder fermentations are slow and get stuck (yeast stop working).

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[brettprevans]

Going to chuck in 3 tablespoons, stir in. Then pitch some more yeast in a couple of days.

 

[pdilley]

As an aside, Ive experimented with bicarb soda (pH = 9) in ciders before. Apple juice finishes acidic and tart/sour and bicarb reacts knocking out the acidity. Ive yet to work out amounts but my test ended up stripping out too much acid which softened the taste too much and it lost that little bit of acid crispness a cider needs. The other cons are any flocculate stirs up easily when disturbed so a few careful rackings to get off it. Suspended bicarb being a salt imparts that bicarby salt like taste, mild compared to table salt but still disagreable in high amounts in solution.

Not using pH strips or a pH meter while adjusting is flying blind as youll not know where you are or if you've only moved the pH a tenth of a point or a full point. Remember pH is a logrithmic scale so pH of 4 is ten times more acidic then 5 and a pH of 3 is ten times more acid then 4 or 100 times more acid than 5. The lower you are the more buffer is needed to pull up the pH value.

I dont think the 5.2 company lists whats really in it which makes the market unable to rationaly decide if its fit for a purpose such as this.

If you have you abv reading and you arenclosr to the attenutive upper end then make sure you make a standard gravity starter of 1/2 cup capacity with a small amount of nutrient and after the new yeast starts subsiding after full krausen
add 1/2 cup of the fermented mead and small amount of nutrient and wait for krausen to reappear and subside. Repeat at least two additional times then pitch. This way you've slowly aclimated the new yeast to the higher abv and tougher environment in your ferment before pitching.

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[BjornJ]

I gave a bottle of my JAO mead to barls, who brought it the ISB big brew day the other weekend.

He shared it out and I got some good feedback from it, was fun trying to make mead

Bjorn

 

[brettprevans]

as usual your right BP. I really need to get some pH strips and do it properly.

 

[evilNat]

Virgin brewer here who has been dying to make mead since living on a divine Swedish brew at a 4 day heavy metal festival in 2002 :icon_chickcheers:

All the brewing terminology of recipes I've found on the internet have put me off, but this recipe here looks really easy.

My father always planned to make me mead but he was under the impression you had to use raw/unprocessed honey. Looks like this recipe uses commercial honey. Great.

Some questions regarding the recipe and outcome:

1. Does the recipe work without the fruit and spices?
2. Is this a light brew or more the sweetness and heaviness of a liquer?
3. If this recipe is heavier than I like, how can I 'lighten' the brew?

I've been able to buy a few commercial meads and the German 'Bren Met' has been the closest in flavour (and only decent mead) to what I drank and would ultimately like to be able to make.

The mead I drank was sweet and light, but still potent, without any obvious other flavours and not as syrupy as Bren Met. It was served coldish (for what Europeans consider a cold drink ) and was easy to drink all day (much like a light wine is-that's the best way I can describe it).
Any advice would be gladly appreciated!
Skl! Kippis! Prost!

 

[pdilley]

God dag og velkommen. Jeg snakke flere norsk enn svenske.

svaret din sprsml

1) The recipe is balanced for fruit and spices. Without them other flavours dominate and you get a different result.

2) This is more on the liqueur side of the heaviness scale

3) To lighten meads, you brew with more alcohol (and longer ageing) by using yeast strains that consume more of the sugars or you add less honey to start with less sugars and use the same yeast. Both methods change the balance of flavours and therefore the final mead. More alcohol and higher tolerance yeast keeps more honey to water ratio. Less honey means more water and everything taste and aroma wise also gets watered down proportionally.

It is always recommended to make at least one batch of mead exactly as the recipe states so you have full knowledge of the full flavour and aroma so that your next batches where you change the recipe you can judge if the changes are working for you or not.


skl,
Brewer Pete

 

[evilNat]

Takk, Brewer Pete!
Actually I speak neither language.

Thanks for those tips, I will definitely try the pure recipe before I start experimenting.

I've mentioned this site and your recipe to a brewing enthusiast Swedish friend as well - he's won a Swedish brewing competition recently - he's familiar with the mead from the festival and may be able to help me eventually refine a recipe for it. Will keep you posted.

 

[Rodolphe01]

I want to put this recipe down for Christmas and figure now is a good time to get it started giving it plenty of time to age.

My only concern is the risk of infection. No one has really mentioned it in the thread, but I guess I am a paranoid beer brewer where everything needs to be boiled. My concern is becasue nothing is boiled (I can handle honey not being boiled), but the spices etc just getting chucked in.

It is clearly not an issue, as no one has been reporting back about any issues.

Cheers.

Edit: 1 more thing, since the high gravity is so brutal on yeast, is there any benefit in pitching 2tsp rather than 1? I buy my bread yeast in a big canister (280g, Lowan brand if it matters) and it costs about $3 for the whole thing, so it isn't really a financial burden bunging some extra in

Edit 2: This is my 5 litre demijohn... Well 4.5 litre scotch bottle. I acquired it from my brother full of bad bad bad homebrew scotch, he acquired it off someone else, full of the same bad bad bad scotch, and so on I used the scotch as a sanitiser for a while, until it grew a white film and infected 2 batches of my beer! How does that even happen?!? Needless to say it is getting a bleach + boiling water treatment.

 

[evilNat]

I'm all fired up to go, with 2 other non-cooking recipes, and wouldn't you know it my local brewing shop didn't have any bungs! GRRR! Now I have to wait for the ones I bought online to arrive in the post <_<

 

[Rodolphe01]

Another question... The honey I get from the markets, although delicious, sometimes has a subtle waxy taste (if that makes sense) - would this be problematic for mead?