Joe's Ancient Orange Mead (5 gallons)

I've been looking around at mead recipes and it seems that the "Orange Clove" mead that I'd been making is more conventionally called "Joe's Ancient Orange", after the guy who formulated the recipe (recipe for 1 gallon batch at HomeBrewTalk.com).

After the first 1 gallon batch, we were hooked on this stuff. My wife wanted to make a 5 gallon batch, so we scaled up, bought a 6 gallon carboy, and started it off. It's been in there about 2 months now.

At larger scales the previous timelines seem to fall apart, though. The fruit hasn't really started to fall at all and some clearing is happening, but there is still plenty of cloud. Looks like this will need at least another month and one or more rackings.

After 2 months

Dry Mint Mead

My dad's garden was coming to the end of the season when I was visiting. He had a ton of mint growing in there that he wasn't going to use. So, I grabbed about a handful of it to try to brew with. I thought a mead would be interesting to infuse with the flavor.

After thinking about it a bit, I decided to try a dry mead with this one (also, I hadn't made a dry mead yet - but had definitely made a sweet and semi-sweet)

The recipe is an adaptation of the dry mead recipe at Storm the Castle:

Dry Mead

• 3 lbs. of Honey
• 1 gallon of water
• 1 teaspoon of yeast nutrient
• 1 teaspoon of yeast energizer
• 1 packet of champagne yeast

I made a tea by simmering the water and dropping in the mint for about 5 minutes. I then used that with the rest of the ingredients for the mead.

After one racking, I bottled. The taste of the champagne yeast is dominant. This is a yeast that naturally delivers a significant flavor and dryness and that is dominant here. My wife said she can taste the mint, but I really kept focusing on the flavor that the yeast imparts.

In working with champagne yeast I've found that it's intense at first but it will back off with aging, letting other flavors come to the front. I'm optimistic that with a few months of aging this will turn into something subtle and good.

Sweet Raspberry Mead

This stuff is great. After my wife and I enjoyed or gave away all of the Orange Clove mead, I decided to try another recipe from the same resource. I picked out the Sweet Raspberry Mead since I love fruit meads.

From Storm The Castle:

Sweet Raspberry Mead (Makes 1 Gallon)

• Yeast: EC-1118 (1 packet)
• 1 Gallon Spring Water
• 4.5 pounds wildflower honey
• 1.5 pounds red raspberries
• The juice from 1 lemon
• The juice from 1 lime
• 3 Tablespoons of strong english tea
• 1 teaspoon of yeast nutrient

Pretty straight forward instructions for this mead. Was the food ingredients before using and crush the raspberries. I froze them for a day before using them so they would break down and release their flavor easier. I thawed them out for the morning, crushed them and added them when I made the mead in the afternoon. Simply add all the ingredients into your mixing carboy then pitch the yeast. Leave extra headroom at the top of the bottle because all the ingredients will cause extra bubbling.

This ran into some minor trouble with blowing raspberry seeds and guts out the air lock. I was using a two bubble lock, so it wasn't really an issue, but if you're using a 3 piece you might run into a problem. I used champagne yeast for fermentation, which (in me experience) can give a fast, violent ferment. That may have lent to the issue too. There are a LOT of fermentables in this recipe, not only from honey but from the fructose in the raspberries as well.

I racked once and when bottling time came I picked up an $8 hand corker (plunger type, which works great as long as you smack the plunger with a hammer).

At bottling the taste is amazing, if not very sweet. It's what I would consider a dessert wine right now. I gave away one bottle and am aging the other two (one gallon batch and there was a fair amount of loss to the sediment from the raspberries) are aging now.

No gravity readings on this. It's probably around 11% alcohol and VERY sweet. And good.

 

 In the primary.  The mass at the top is all seeds and pulp.  More pictures:

  

 

Project Update

Last night we racked the Welch's Wine and the cider into their respective "secondary" fermenters. I use quotes because rather than sourcing new containers to use as fermenters, we used a brew bucket (sanitized, of course) as a holding vessel while cleaning out the original container, re-sanitizing it, then racking the wine/cider back into the original container.

I also took the opportunity to taste both, but didn't have too much since there is still some yeast in suspension (drink too much of that and you'll regret it).

Here are some updates on our projects:

Welch's Wine: This tastes surprisingly good. It has a taste similar to a very dry white. If I bottle carbonate some of it, it could even pass for a cheap champagne. It also has a very strong (alcohol) taste.

Hard Cider: Still has a hint of that sulfur odor, but it's fading and I expect it to be gone soon. The flavor imparted by the champagne yeast is very strong. Not much apple taste left. I'm starting to wish I had used a cider or ale yeast instead of trying to use the champagne yeast. It'll still be very drinkable, but I think it's going to turn out more like a weak apple wine than a hard cider.

Cherry Wheat Ale: A small fermentation is still happening from the yeast eating the sugars in the puree. When I have a chance, I'm going to snap a picture to upload. I'm sure the way it looks is nothing out of the ordinary, but the appearance is interesting. It's likely the yeast proliferating then dying betwixt all of the cherry puree bits.

Orange Clove Mead: Primary fermentation is still going strong. Yeast cake is starting to form on the bottom of the jug.

I realized the other day that I intended to document the varieties of yeast I was using for each of these. I'll have to do that on another update.

Orange Clove Mead

I became intrigued with a recipe for mead that I saw at Storm The Castle. They outline a fermentation method using the jug that the spring water comes in and an ordinary balloon with holes punched in it as an airlock. I decided to try the recipe but invested in a 1 gallon glass jug, stopper, and a glass airlock. (The brew store near me, Brew and Grow, only had glass ones in stock the day I was there. I'd really prefer a plastic one, since I'm scared as hell of breaking the glass one. It is pretty cool though.) I knew that I'd likely end up using the 1 gallon jug for other brewing experiments, so I figured it would be a good investment.

The issue with making mead, like making wine, is that honey doesn't contain the nutrients needed for yeast to proliferate properly. From what I understand, the raisins and oranges take the place of the yeast nutrient and yeast energizer, respectively, that you find in typical mead recipes.

One thing that I love about this recipe is that you can find all of the ingredients at almost any grocery store. In fact, we got all of ours at Trader Joe's. For that reason, they all also happen to be organic (if that matters to you at all). I bought the clover honey, per the recipe, but Trader Joe's also has mesquite honey, which I'm thinking I might try out in my next batch of mead. The only thing that Trader Joe's didn't have was water in sufficient sizes, which we got at the local grocery store.

Preparation was as simple as sanitizing, mixing all of the ingredients, shaking, then fixing the airlock. Fermentation took off within a day and has been going strong since.

I'm reprinting the recipe here (same recipe, but from another section of the Storm the Castle site, with other mead recipes):

Orange Clove Mead

Interesting flavor and makes 1 gallon

• 1 gallon of Spring Water
• Yeast: Fleishcmanns (1 packet)
• 25 Raisins
• 1 Cinnamon stick
• 1 whole orange, sliced and peels included
• 1 pinch of allspice
• 1 pinch of nutmeg
• 3 1/2 pounds of clover honey

Simply mix all the ingredients then pitch your yeast. Caring for this mead? The beautiful thing about this mead is that you can rack it off of all the oranges and raisins any time you want to, or you can just leave it all in there. When the oranges sink to the bottom you are ready to drink it or bottle it.. Simple as that. I recommend you bottle it and let it age for a couple more months. This recipe is just simply delicious.

Be sure to check out their site for tons of great info on mead making. If you've never homebrewed or made mead before, make sure to look at the method outlined in the first page I posted for a super easy method that doesn't require a lot of upfront cost on equipment.

Fermentation Start: 9/19/2009
Estimated Fermentation End: 11/14/2009
Original Gravity: ???
Estimated Final Gravity: 1.000

My setup:

Once we're done with this batch, I think I'm going to try the sweet raspberry mead that they list in their recipe section as well.

UPDATE - 11/9/2009

Been almost two months on this one. Primary fermentation appeared to end about 3 weeks ago and it's cleared up nicely. The fruit still hasn't sank to the bottom, per the recipe, so I'm just waiting for that to happen, then it's bottling time.