Joe's Ancient Orange Mead Recipe (2024)

FAQs

How many oranges for a gallon of mead? ›

1 gallon batch. 3 ½ lbs Clover or your choice honey or blend (will finish sweet) 1 Large orange (later cut in eights or smaller, rind and all) 1 small handful of raisins (25 if you count but more or less ok)

A good starting point with most fruits is about 3 pounds of fruit per gallon of mead, though I have been known to use 5 or even 6 pounds of fruit. Fruit blends can produce some great-tasting meads.

One gallon of juice is produced from 13 pounds of oranges; the shipping differences are correspondingly large. Additionally, when oranges are destined to be sold to the consumer whole, the trees they grown on are treated with more pesticides and fertilizers to ensure shelf-stability and visual appeal for consumers.

Check acid levels in any fruit used (some fruit have higher acid levels, unripe fruit has higher acid levels). Check for infection, particularly lactobacillus. Check sweetness levels and attenuation (an over-attenuated and drier mead than expected might seem acidic if less sweetness is present than what was planned).

You can drink mead like a port or sherry – a slightly bigger tot at the end of the evening or a particularly nice meal. You can drink it in a wine glass throughout the evening like a nice bottle of wine – most go well with food. You could even go full Viking and enjoy your mead from a drinking horn!

What does Viking Mead taste like? Sweet and light, it's unique, but can be compared to a Moscato wine. Typical viking mead, alcohol level ranges from 4-8%, but can be higher. Mead is sweet and deceptively crushable, with a big honey flavor.

Drinking too much of any alcoholic beverage, including mead, can increase your blood triglycerides, blood pressure and your risk of obesity and diabetes ( 8 ). While there isn't much information available on the precise nutritional content of mead, pure alcohol alone provides 7 calories per gram.

The reason for mead no longer being popular comes down to simple economics. It's just more expensive to produce compared to beer or wine. As with many things in life, things that are easier are more likely to happen. Perhaps some day we'll see a mead renaissance.

Aging mead enhances desirable qualities and subdues undesirable flavors. Whether aged in carboys, barrels, or bottles, this guide delves into the nuances of mead aging.

What happens if you add too much yeast to mead? ›

Back to your question: What happens if a winemaker adds too much yeast? Probably not much—there's only so much sugar in the grapes for the yeast to convert, and that limits how much work there is for yeast to do.

If you want to make high-ABV mead, there are two ways you can consider. Either you can add more sugar or use a fermentation technique that produces higher levels of alcohol. Adding more sugar can also increase the potential alcohol content.

The lemon juice adds acid which makes for a happier environment for the yeast. The tea adds tannins which act as nutrients for the mead. Also, the acid and tannins make for a more flavourful mead. In this case I also wanted to capture the flavour of the tea and the lemons in the mead.

There are 4 to 5 tablespoons or 1/4 to 1/3 cups of juice in one orange. To make one cup of fresh orange juice, you need three oranges. It's important to note this amount is for common oranges. Different varieties of orange, such as Valencia, navel, mandarin, or blood oranges will produce different quantities of juice.

Acid blend is also added at between 1/4 tsp – 1/2 tsp per gallon.

Want to make mead using apples? Here's what you need to do to make a delicious cyser: Then cut or press the equivalent of 3-6 sanitized, cleaned apples per gallon and/or add 1/4 to 1/2 gallon of your favorite cider or juice per gallon of expected volume.