Easy Orange Mead

Whilst watching a Skyrim video, they made one too many references to mead...

Overview

Followed the standard Easy Orange Mead recipe.

I have attempted to follow the recipe in metric and with what I could get from my local supermarket and I am hoping that there will be something drinkable by September or December.

Conversion

The biggest issue was that I could not get a large 1 gallon bottle of water (1 us gallon is 3.79 liters). So instead I opted to divide the recipe into four and use four 1.5 liter bottles only filling each up to 1 liter. Each bottle would then be over by 55ml which should be ok.

Converting 3lbs of honey to metric we get 1360 grams. Dividing this into four is 340 grams which is exactly the weight of 1 jar of basic honey. That is rather handy.

07th June 2012

• Warmed 4 jars of honey by putting them into warm water for 20 mins.
• Washed and sanitised everything that was to come into contact with the mead.
• Sliced orange into quarters and then halves to fit into the bottles.
• Measured 10 raisins per bottle.
• 4cm cinnamon stick divided into four.
• 1 bakers yeast packet contents divided into four. I poured evenly onto 4 teaspoons.
• Measured 1l in each bottle, added honey, raisins, orange cinnamon. Used a measuring jug to pour carefully into each bottle.
• Shook each bottle for 5 minutes.
• Added yeast.
• Another quick shake.
• Attached balloons and secured with string.
• Completed at 2230.

08th June 2012

The yeast in each bottle started over night and a foam appeared on all four.

One observations was that by dividing the batch into four, there would be less gas released by each bottle. Two of the ballons did not inflate because I had put more than one hole in them.

Those ballons have been replaced and new faces drawn.

This evening 24 hours after starting the process the fermemt seems to be picking up. Listening carefully you can hear it bubbling.

27th June 2012

With fermentation slowing it was time to rack the mead into a demijohn that I had since acquired. I devised this racking technique which worked very well.

Racked mead and tasting:

Mead is a cloudy orange fluid. It smelled very strongly of orange and tasted like a strong dry cider. However on subsequent tasting there were more complex flavours including a zingyness which might have been the cinnamon. At the end of the glass was a more mellow deeper flavour which more closely reminded me of mead.

In the demijohn, tiny bubbles are still rising and the airlock is popping once every few minutes.

10th July 2012

The mead is still ticking over nicely. Tiny bubbles are rising and it looks considerably clearer now than before. A torch beam is visible when shone through the demijohn.

24th July 2012

The mead has been clearing nicely and now I think it has cleared completely so is ready for batch sweetening and bottling which I will attempt to work on this week.

26th July 2012

Racked the mead and tasted it at the same time.

Mead 0.994. Still tasted strong and the orange flavour was less prominent. There was a tangy taste and a bitter aftertaste. Sweetening with honey corrected the bitterness. Overall a nicer taste, with the honey giving it a depth of flavour and more pleasant feel. Still a bit tangy afterwards though which I guess will settle with age.

09th August 2012

The mead is clearing out nicely so I thought I would get things ready for bottling. Firstly, I wanted to sweeten the mead.

In this case I added 267g of blended honey to water, heated the solution to mix the honey and added this to the mead. I did this in stages adding progressively more honey until I got to the right sweetness.

Obviously if you are mixing the honey with the mead this will stir up the mead, so I will need to give it another week to settle down again before final bottling.

05th September 2012

Got a chance to bottle the mead whilst I was working on the Blackberry mead. Bottled using wine bottles and a hand corker. I aimed to fill 3 wine bottles and a number of 'single serving' beer bottles.

The mead is mellowing out nicely now, a good depth of flavour and a orange finish. I would serve it chilled as it is quite a strong flavour which might not be appropriate.