Joe’s Ancient Orange Mead
If you have been exploring the world of mead online then you probably have come across something called JOAM or Joe’s Ancient Orange Mead. Typically, the recipe is found at BrewTalk.com. This is such an easy mead to start with that I couldn’t pass it up. Nothing special is required. You can go to the local grocery store and begin.
Servings Prep Time
1gallon 30minutes
Cook Time Passive Time
1months 8months
Servings Prep Time
1gallon 30minutes
Cook Time Passive Time
1months 8months
Ingredients
Instructions
Lets get started
  1. Wash and sanitize a one gallon container, glass is best but plastic will work. We use starsan to sanitize our containers. It will foam quite a bit while cleaning. Give it an extra few rinses just to be sure its clean.
  2. Wash the orange and cut into pieces. Add to jugs.
  3. Add the remaining ingredients; raisins, clove, cinnamon stick, and other spices.
  4. Dissolve 3 lbs of honey in some warm, not hot, water and add to each container.
  5. Add the yeast.
Let it ferment
  1. When all the ingredients are added, top off with water to fill your container up. Leave about 4-5 inches of space from the mouth of the container.
  2. This brew is going to bubble and foam up. As you can see in this photo I slightly over filled with water. This wont ruin the batch, just make for some unexpected clean up later.
  3. Put it somewhere out of the way and wait 1 month. After one month the yeast should have settled down and you should be seeing your airlock bubble very infrequently. If you wait longer than one month the orange should eventually fall to the bottom.
  4. Keep waiting and the while thing should clear on its own.
Two Week Update
  1. The overall color has changed. There are signs of clearing.
  2. You can see the sediment build up at the bottom. This is very fine and loose. Just moving the container to take the photo disturbed the sediment.
  3. At this point care should be taken not to disturb the young mead. If possible store this where you will do the bottling or racking.
Four Week Update
  1. Here we go. Week four is upon us. This is looking great. You can see this batch is continuing to clear at a rapid pace. Nothing else has been added, just the original recipe plus time.
  2. Not quite ready. The fruit is still floating up at the top. Others have indicated that with enough time the remaining fruit will fall to the bottom.
  3. You can see all the dead yeast that has fallen. The dark item is the cinnamon stick that settled to the bottom.