Jao The Ultimate Beginners Mead Recipe

[brettprevans]

Will post pics of my 25L JAO on Monday.
Few slight mederations. Ran out of raisins at 107 (yes I decided to count them). Sultanas made up the rest. Not enough cinamon so u threw 1 star anise in and a tiny bit a ground cinamon I had.
80% orange blossum 20% iron bark.

Smells nom nom nom

I looked at the pics i took whilst making this and they were crap, so no pics. smelt awsome this morning.
my 2 girls loved watching me make this. they kept sticking there fingers in the honey that was beoing poured into the fermentor (little honey fiends). they kept asking 'are you making honey for the girls'. ummm no darlings this is for mummy and daddy.

This is seriously sooooo easy to make, even at 25L and whilst kind of supervising 2 young kids this is easy to make. So anyone considering making this should. its easier than making a K&K.


I am running behind on putting down my plumb melomel though.

 

[antihuman]

first post; but thought I would let you know I have decided to give this a shot also with one minor change. I will post some pictures once everything settles and give my twenty cents worth on the taste. I used my grandfathers honey which is a basic 'Yellow Box' honey which is basically a Eucalyptus based honey from a single breed of eucalyptus.

 

[pdilley]

I've never had luck with any admin-type user editing the front post to clear up any confusing instruction steps or other clean up.

Therefore I have created a PDF document from my very own personal Brewing Wiki and uploading it in this post.

Please refer to this PDF for the latest revision (currently revision number 15) and make sure to help any new JAO brewers out but linking back to it when it gets buried under any new posts.

View attachment JAORecipe_v15.pdf

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[northwest9]

i put down my first of these last night. unfortunately i didnt get to the canberra brewers night to taste your samples pete, i was out of town. but with dan and gareth both giving it the thumbs up, and me having nothing brewing at the moment, i had to get amongst it.

im surprised by the speed at which the yeast gets started compared to a beer yeast.

I am currently without temperature control, i sold my fridgemate, and am awaiting my tempmates, but i kept it in the linen cupboard overnight, and it is sitting at 21.

 

[pdilley]

Not to worry, the weather forecast patterns for the week show 19C to 23C at the end of a 7 day forecast. This is about the time (give a week or two more) that I put down the JAOs that were at the club and fermented at ambient temperatures. If the pattern continues as its forecasted and continues on a downward trend through the weeks then you'll be alright. Might take longer to finish when facing really cold weather.


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[pdilley]

smells nom nom nom

Just wait until its actively fermenting. Oh the smells that will await you!


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[pdilley]

I used my grandfathers honey which is a basic 'Yellow Box' honey which is basically a Eucalyptus based honey from a single breed of eucalyptus.

Using what you have available is not a problem. JAO has been made with a variety of honeys. I always feel that fresh is best as from a farm or better yet a beekeeper. Once you taste fresh honey stright from a hive without heating or pasteurisation you will understand when I say that all those supermarket honeys are not honey, they bear little resemblance in delicate taste and aromas of the real honey from a hive. This is why I started the build your own beehive post and am keeping bees in my back yard right now.

Its all good with mead


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[sirotilc]

I bottled my first batch of JAO last night - very difficult to not do "one for the bottles, one for me". I've tried a few commercial meads over the years but was never particularly impressed, I ended up having a tiny little glass that wouldn't fit in the bottles I'd sanitised. Absolutely beautiful, there's nothing I can think of quite like it.

So now I'm going to copy you again Pete and do a big batch of traditional with the plan of splitting it into smaller batches with different 'things' - rose/rose water with vanilla, apple juice, and lavender all come to mind for ideas. Just need to track down some DAP and listen to a few podcasts!

 

[northwest9]

Using what you have available is not a problem. JAO has been made with a variety of honeys. I always feel that fresh is best as from a farm or better yet a beekeeper. Once you taste fresh honey stright from a hive without heating or pasteurisation you will understand when I say that all those supermarket honeys are not honey, they bear little resemblance in delicate taste and aromas of the real honey from a hive. This is why I started the build your own beehive post and am keeping bees in my back yard right now.

Its all good with mead


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

yep, my old mans farm has a bee keeper whose been hanging out there for a while, and always gives dad a big tub of honey for it.

hes got miles too much honey at home, and was certainly a little confused when i asked him if i could take the 3kgs he has.....

i might hit the bee keeper up, raise his "honey rent" to enough for a 23litre batch each year

 

[northwest9]

hey Pete

I have bene keeping my mead in the pantry, wrapped in a blanket to try to keep the temp stable, both my temp controlled fridges are full, so i have had no other option.

i had a look this morning, and the temp was down to 14.

i am going to slowly bring the temp back up to around 20. will this have any negative effect ont he mead?

 

[pdilley]

I've kept JAO fermenting at abient temperatures over winter before. It just adds 2-3 months to the fermenting time. So if you can wait and are not bothered keep it as is. If you bring it up to 20 no harm either.

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[murrayr]

just bought the orange blossom i'll be using for my first mead!
it'll be a 10 litre batch and modelled very closely on the JAO recipe.
has anyone had any luck making mead with WLP760 or WLP755?
anywho, wish me luck. Murray

 

[gareth]

My JAO has been fermenting in my temp controlled fermenter since the 7th March.
It has recently completely cleared up (Looks great! ) but the fruit is all still at the top, with a distinct yeast layer at the bottom.

Has fermentation completed or is it still going?

 

[pdilley]

Its looking good gareth. You are pretty much near the end. It won't hurt to leave it for a few weeks if you want to see fruit drop. JAO will improve with a month or two of conditioning before drinking from the bottle but not much improvement will be seen past 5 to 6 months ageing. So you can do a gravity check if you want to be sure and then bottle it as a still Mead and let it age at any time thats convenient for you.


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[pdilley]

has anyone had any luck making mead with WLP760 or WLP755?
anywho, wish me luck. Murray

Only used Montrachet in an Apfelwein

I wouldn't use either of those in a JAO recipe as its formulated on here though. They'll both push it drier than its intended target finish point.


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[gareth]

Its looking good gareth. You are pretty much near the end. It won't hurt to leave it for a few weeks if you want to see fruit drop. JAO will improve with a month or two of conditioning before drinking from the bottle but not much improvement will be seen past 5 to 6 months ageing. So you can do a gravity check if you want to be sure and then bottle it as a still Mead and let it age at any time thats convenient for you.


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

Thanks Brewer Pete,

Does oxidation affect mead? Just thinking about how to syphon the mead out of the demijohn.
Could I syphon it all out to one container then pour it into my separate bottles?

Cheers
Gareth

 

[pdilley]

Yes oxidation will be an issue with Mead in the same way it is with Wine. Doing a syphon into bottles from the JAO fermenter is not a big issue. But when consuming Mead the repeated opening and closing of a bottle will introduce more oxygen and eventually it will go off like Wine does so I like to bottle small and use it in one go or the day after opening. Now that I have a CO2 tank handy I don't worry anymore as I can give a squirt of CO2 into the bottle to increase time before it will oxidise during the consumption period.


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[biggo]

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

 

[501]

Thanks for this thread ^_^

Just thought I'd better sign the register.

I am just drinking my first JAOM and am hooked.

Cheers

 

[brettprevans]

since the thread has popped up again i'll report back on my 25L of JAO

about 2.5 months in primary
still about 70% fruit floating on top I recon
so i recon the bread yeast isnt working hard enough. time to throw some more yeast at it i think.

edit: actually i should taker another SG reading. it was still high about a 2-3 weeks ago. from memory it was arounf 1060