Jao The Ultimate Beginners Mead Recipe

[watchUburn]

thanks for the advice BP.
Since I'm still pretty new to the whole home brew business I haven't got to the point where I take notes while putting together the brew. After all, at the moment it's all following the recipe right? Irony there. As I've found out there still room to stuff it all up...

I think I did use navel oranges, and they were kinda big so I had to cut them into smaller pieces than the recipe said. This is before I found out about the impact of increased surface areas. The next JAO will be smaller oranges and as thin skinned as I can find.

I can't recall the exact yeast, it's not something I have in the house so borrowed some from a neighbour. Also as I didn't have a controlled temperature environment at the time the mead was going through some pretty high temps. Some of the days were mid 30s.

The hydrometer reading is at 1.031, I was expecting it to be much lower.

I'm not sure if I could be bothered 'saving' this brew. If it'll take 6 months for the fusels to age out, I might as well just chuck it and make a drinkable JAO in less time.

 

[pdilley]

Ouch, 35 C +/- a few degres is way to hot. Summer temperatures are mid 30's to mid 40's here and I waited for a stable set of temperatures in the low 20's without any spikes above 25 C predicted in the forecast to begin. Thats also why you finished first.

Don't stress it though, it is your first batch and only a small batch at that. All (correction: most) brewing we do won't work out at those temperatures. The magic number to keep the fermentation under is 25 C and my preference is to always ferment below the upper limits so for this particular recipe I would consider 18 to 22 to be an ideal range.

I should have noted the oranges but they were stock standard eating oranges from the local IGA available in March; small and juicy and good eating. I don't consider IGA great quality in their produce but if I remeber I forgot to pick some up and the IGA was under 2 minutes drive away so I ended up using them out of convenience.

I wish I could dig up one of those new small airline bottles for wine they give you these days--something small and plastic that won't break and I could mail you a sample to try. I have not flown for while now and the LHBS has specimen bottles which are small and plastic but that would not be very appetising to pour from

This is going to be a sweet sack mead that can sometimes border on apertif territory so the sweet finish level is expected.

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[pdilley]

I put both JAOs in the brew fridge yesterday along with some Ale at 21 C and it has done both JAOs a world of good. By the time I got home from work and inspected the fridge to see if the Ale might need a blow off tube I looked at both JAOs and they are nearly twice as clear as when I put them both in. One had some refloated fruit so some CO2 bubbles must have caught two swollen raisins an gave them a lift up. Lets see how both of the JAOs look by weeks end when I get around to bottling the Ale.

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[lokgnar]

woohoo :lol: just checked on me mead i found out that its been 2.5 months and my friut has settled but not real clear been reading the last few posts so goin to fit in fridge to clear then bottle time.Time to clean some up thanks for all the help

 

[pdilley]

My JAOs are in the 5+ month stretch and have mellowed out a lot. Take a small sample to judge the alcohol levels. They are both still not to the clarity level as I am used to with other honey varietals, and I have used my stringy bark with brewing yeasts and they are not clear either so its not a yeast issue. My ironbark JAOs should show if its the varietal. That said I doubt they will last till my sparkaloid arrives from the States--My wife is hooked and has ordered that more be brewed.

Now that my bee hives are built I can get around to bottling them as well as my poor German Hefeweizen thats been in the kitchen on the bench for well over a week.


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[lokgnar]

hello all again um pete i havent noticed any differance in clarity after placeing in fridge its been about 2-3days i was just wondering i own a pet store and can a get a hold of carbon if i were to filter though this it shouldnt ruin it at all would it? (i have not taken it out of demijohn yet shoud i, is this my problem)

cheers
shawn

 

[pdilley]

The good news is its not effecting the flavour of the Mead. Its not bacterial or even likely a yeast issue.

The bad news is it looks like the age old Mead fault. That of suspended proteins in solution. While honeys are mostly sugars, bits of plant, pollens impart mixture of proteins. That is what boiling fixes. Honey varietals with protein cloudiness are boiled to induce protein break and removal of the protein helps Meads end clear. All Meads made with this batch of stringy bark are not clear even with variety of yeasts and knowing fermentation has completed. All have dense flocculation of yeast on the bottom of the secondaries and have lightened up cobsiderably over aging.

Its a shame if so as I wouldn't flag the variety for a stock Mead where its the honey standing on its own. Not as worried with the spiced Meads like JAO but it does mean the next batch gets the boil and skim method to compare to this current batch for clarity before making a final decision on protein as the cause.

Its still tasting great just wouldn't enter it in a competition in its current clarity state.

I'll have sparkaloid in a few months and will retain some of the current batch to see how well it clears.

Charcoal filtering would be ok if clarity is an issue for you.


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[~MikE]

wouldn't carbon soak up all the flavours and aromas? if clarity is that big an issue, i'd suggest looking into methods used for flocculating protein haze out of white wines.

 

[pdilley]

One would normally think so as activated charcoal filtering is normally the domain of the spirit distillers.

However, if you look at the wine gear for the home wine maker, they sell filtering machines with replaceable filters including the activated charcoal, the buon vino super jet filter machine comes to mind. Now I think with those wine filter machines they still recommend keeping charcoal for use with spirits and come with a whole collection of filters to use starting with coarse particles.

What the filters are made from is any guess. It could end up being like ordinary coffee filter papers because the actual filters have names like "Crystalbrite" which are obvious made up marketing names.

I'm waiting on the clay based sparkolloid solution myself to see how it works as I'm not a filter person. I'd rather just drink it unfiltered as is if the sparkaloid can not shift it. Finings will effect taste the least and there exists a passionate antifiltration group in some of the wine making circles so its up to each individual as to what they want to choose.

If you want to drink it now and cloudiness bothers you then you have to pick one of the above. If you can wait a year then likely most issues will be gone.

I like it as it is, so does the wife. So I'm withholding some for the sparkolloid treatment to determine if boiling is the next method to apply to future stringy bark honeys when using them but most of it will be gone by then consumed in its current as-is state.


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

EDIT: can't spell

 

[lokgnar]

well if cloudyness doest mean much except for looks it shall be drunk as it is thanks agian

 

[BjornJ]

Jeg tror vikingene drakk de mjd og brakte den til England.

Franksmennene likte druer bedre.

Har har! Slaps you heartily on the back and welcomes you into the Mead Hall.

hei, er det flere Nordmenn her!
jeg har ikke laget mjd fr, men vil gjerne prve..

Do you read Norwegian, BrewerPete or did you just find it on a brew site somewhere?


Bjorn

 

[pdilley]

min familie flyttet fra Langeland til Tyskland og derette til Australia
men jeg forstr det snakkes norsk bedre enne danske

do give making meads a try, they really are tasty and are quite unique in that although maybe being a bit closer to wine, they are nit wines nor beers. time is all you need to make really good Meads

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[pdilley]

well if cloudyness doest mean much except for looks it shall be drunk as it is thanks agian

Do sample it, while there are wine faults that lead to cloudiness that can be bacterialy based, its highly unlikely in this case. All I got from extended aging was well mellowed JAO with any harsh edge from being young well gone away. Its hit its peak and won't get dramatically better from here on out.

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[pdilley]

Its bottling day.

Just to show you where we started from:

JAO 1 Clove and JAO 2 Clove on Day #1



JAO 2 removed from brew fridge where it has lived for past couple of months. The flash reflects back and makes it cloudier than it really is under normal light so take that into account its not as bad as the flash photo shows.


A huge reduction in colour and apart from the suspected protein haze with the Stringy Bark varietal (future Stringy Bark JAOs will get the boil treatment to test the protein haze hypothesis), it tastes just like JAO should, and dangerously so. Bottles for this and its twin, 1 Clove, today and I only pray they last out the weekend when SWMBO notices them in the house and all bottled up.

The brand of Cloves I bought showed no noticeable difference in strength between one and two clove versions. Both are very close in potency. However, do test your brand first as I have had cloves that do show quite difference when doubled up at this volume.

Cheers,
Brewer Pete


EDIT: Add Post Bottling Photo.

The bottling is done.

Mmmmmm doesn't that look a treat. Not bad for months on end pickled in Mead.


Time to clean and then get these demi's back into making the next batch of Mead!

 

[lokgnar]

wel mine tasted really really bad even after adding honey to sweetin it up and is there a easy way to empty it (demijohn) out like you of course got to filter it while pouring it into bottles but how? please im only a simpleton and ask many question which may seem easy to other people. so im going to try agian this weekend without the naval orange and go for the other smaller type which should fix my problem, also i thoght i had today would mandarins work?

 

[pdilley]

Define bad, do you have watch's over bittering from orange issue or fusel hot alcohol from high fermentation temperatures? These seem to be the two faults most people are ending up with

The fusels we can solve with temperature controls. This is the easiest of all to solve.

The oranges we are going to have to make a roster of Australian oranges and time of year/season to determine what varieties are too bitter to use. This is the harder one to solve as it will take a few brews of all the varietals to get a list. I'm going to have to make more attention in selection than IGA oranges on special in March 2009.

Now what an orange does for JAO is two things.

1. Orange flavour. Take a slice of orange and eat it and save the skin. Take the skin in your fingers and squeeze it with the orange skin on the outside curve of the squeeze. You will see droplets fly out of the orange skin.

These droplets are a little water but also "essential oils" This is what gives the orange flavour to JAO. Orange is a flavour that mixes well with cloves and also with cinnamon and is a mixture in many old food recipes.

2. Bitterness. You need to balance bitter with sweet. Same concept as balancing sweet malt in beer with bitter hops. The whites of the orange is the pith. The pith is bitter at different levels in different varieties of oranges. This is as in hops where some hop varieties are more intensely bitter than other hops. The same with oranges. The number of slicesis a critical measure to expose enough pith to bitter but not too much to over bitter. As with beer where if a hop is very bitter you use less with orange pith its the same concept. You can still use the oranges you have used but you must reduce the pith in the bottle than what you have done in your over bitter brew of JAO.

Only you know bow much over bitter your brew is. So to cut back bitter you need to make the call.

Your techniques include grating the skin or "zesting" you orange. This gets you the essential oil essence of Orange for flavour (and some bitterness). You could stop there and just add orange fruit chunks and zest and leave all the skin and pith out. Or you could add a small slice or two etc. of pith and skin along with the zest and orange fruit segments.

If you switch to another fruit like the mandarin you change the flavour profile and you still have to fine tune your bitterness levels to that fruit. Its recommended to fine tune your orange levels to learn whats your best ratio of zest and fruit in tbe fermenter to bow much if any pith.


Temperature, just buy a TempMate controller and use a brew fridge and heater so you can dial in exact temperature and leave your JAO alone until done. This will be critical to any and all future brewing be it mead or beer and will be one of the best investments in your endeavours.

With those two faults elimanted nothing should stop you from knocking out perfect Meads with regular consistency.

For now though working on getting your bittering levels right will cost less in spare money bit cost more in your time to sort out what your local oranges work best at.



In the meantime post your method, size/type of Orange and how many slices. Fermentation temps and timeline.

I'll go see about the brands of each ingredient I used and put them up.

EDIT: Tomorrow after work I can get a photo of the racking/bottling setup posted.

Cheers,

Brewer Pete

 

[BjornJ]

I have read this post a couple of times over the last few days.
Never really thought of making mead before, this post makes it sound uncomplicated and fun!

After reading the feedback I am left with 2 questions it would probably pay to get some feedback on before giving it a shot:

1: What kind of bread yeast? I must admit my only source of dry bakers yeast will be woolworth/coles, is there a particular type to aim for? (I understood the recipe as using an American type)

2: Use half an orange rather than a whole orange? If using a too large, too thick-skinned or too thinly sliced orange will give a too bitter flavour, should I aim for maybe half an orange and just grab a random one from the supermarket?

Won't have time to try this for a little while yet, but has started wondering what this would taste like

thanks
Bjorn

 

[pdilley]

Bjorn reread the above. Typing on my phone so I was editing the a above when you posted.

The two biggest faults discovered to date are bittering problems and too high a fermentation temperature.

If you have a large Orange with thick white pith I would recommend zest it and add the fruit and zest and leage out the pith for now. The only risk is a sweet mead with a need for more bittering. Its easier to add in more bitter than take it out so err on the sweet side will give you more movement room to correct.

Fermentation temperatures. Too hot in all brewing is bad. Keep it under 25C and 18-22 would be considered preferred range. This is less of a problem in the States because Australia gets a lot hotter than most of the places in the States.

As with all brewing when your temperatures get too cold the yeast get sluggish and will go dormant. So keeping the Mead warm but not too warm is the other challenge over here. This is probably harder for the begginer to control but the easiest to fix; just costs about $70 or so for a TempMate and a fridge and a heater source like a heat belt or rish tank heater. You dial your wanted temperature in and shut the fridge and walk away and its all taken care of for you.


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[MHB]

The haze problems some are experiencing is probably Pectin, and can easily be cleared up with the addition of a little Pectinase.

Or by keeping pith the hell out of your mead.

MHB

 

[lokgnar]

ok it was over bitter,i used a large naval ornage which i believe is the start of me problem and i went against ur 1st rule (cause i was goin by a home brew shop at the time) and bought a sn9 yeast suppose to be a sweet wine/mead yeast so it says on packet temps were pretty good though colder months because i oun a pet shop i had a heat mat there so i dont believe me heatin is a problem it many have got to the higher 20's on 1 or 2 days but that was toward the end im in queensland bout 1/2 from ipswich, an 11/2 from brisbane so when i start again this weekend the temp will be perfect for away cause its startin to warm up to around the 24C

thanks
shawn