# Jaom



## wineforfun (Dec 21, 2012)

Now that I have a few batches of wine under my belt, I want to give mead a try. The JAOM recipe looks like a good starter and is supposed to end up sweet, which is what I will want. I notice in the directions, it talks about dissolving the honey in warm water. Could someone please explain? Do you pour the honey into the water or just put the container(containing honey) into the warm water to loosen it up?
Thanks.

I am sure I am overthinking this.


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## ffemt128 (Dec 21, 2012)

I added the Honey to warm water to disolve it. I made this as my first batch of Mead, it does come out very sweet. Still have a bottle that is coming up on 3 years old.


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## wineforfun (Dec 21, 2012)

How much water are we talking?


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## fatbloke (Dec 22, 2012)

if the honey is runny and not crystalised, then just add enough water to make the honey (weight as per recipe) up to 1 gallon total liquid.

Then just stir it to mix it in then add the other ingredients, except the yeast. If you're gonna use a 1 gallon water bottle for the fermenter or similar carboy, you will need to remove a pint or two before pitching the yeast, as it will produce a lot of gas in the early stages and you need to allow for some room for possible foaming, then after say a week to 10 days, you should be able to add the reserved liquid back in to top up the carboy to the top

Equally, you can make it in a bucket or a carboy of a larger size, but then just make it up as per the recipe (or as closely as you can) that way there's room for foaming and as long as you don't keep meddling with it, it will ferment and the airspace will by full of CO2 in the short term, and the mead protected from oxidation. Just leave it for 12 to 14 weeks and it will be finished and the fruit should have also sunk and you'll be ready to either rack off the fruit/sediment to make sure it's settled and clear before bottling or you can just bottle direct and if you picked up a little bit of sediment, it would just settle out in the bottles.....


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## wineforfun (Dec 24, 2012)

Thank you very much for the help. I may back off the honey a little so it isn't so sweet.


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## BernardSmith (Dec 24, 2012)

I guess I don't understand. Honey is sweet if the sugars that constitute the honey have not been converted to alcohol. If you allow the yeast to convert all the sugar to alcohol then there is , for all intents and purposes, no sugar left for the mead to be sweet. It should be "dry". To make the mead sweeter you might need to add some sugar (or honey). If the mead tastes sweet that suggests to me that for whatever reason you have not fermented out all the sugar. I suppose you could deliberately stop the fermentation process before all the sugars have converted to alcohol. But you have very little ability to fine tune the level of sweetness your mead will have. You have maximum control over how sweet your mead will be when you bottle it by fermenting out all the sugars and then adding sweetner after you have stabilized the wine(stopping any new yeast activity converting the newly added sugars). How sweet that mead will be will then utterly depend on how much additional sugar (or honey) you have added. Honey tastes sweet but mead tastes of the honey without the sweetness unless you add sweetness to it - or you left unfermented, sugars in the mead


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## fatbloke (Dec 24, 2012)

It would seem that the whole point behind the JAOM recipe is to use ingredients that are easily obtained from a local grocery store, which uses a method whereby there's enough sugars to hit the tolerance of the yeast (while there's little data about the fermenting ability of bread yeast anecdotally it will do about 12%). So there's residual sugars left over to make it sweet.

Yes you can use wine yeast but that tends to ferment it dry which focuses the flavour on the bitterness from the orange pith, which is normally balanced out by the residual sweetness.

Its not a recipe that you're supposed to "understand" just to follow "as is" for a consistent, repeatable result. That's easily made with basic kit and ingredients.....


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## wineforfun (Jan 22, 2013)

Ok, its been 3 1/2 weeks now and it is really starting to clear up. Fruit is still floating. My question is for any of you that have use this recipe. I believe it states that around 60 days, give or take, it would be clearing up. Has anyone used this recipe and found it clear/ready to bottle in 30 or so?
I took a taste off the top with a straw last night and it is very bitter/tart. I imagine 2-4 months of aging in a bottle will do it wonders.


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## fatbloke (Jan 22, 2013)

We get too hung up with time. Especially the newer mead makers.....

The one thing thats hardest to get, is patient.

Its generally 2 to 3 months. I like to let the fruit drop completely as it makes life easier when racking.

But as long as the batch seems to be following the instructions, it doesnt really matter if the fruit drops then it clears or it clears then the fruit drops.

As for it seeming bitter/tart tasting ? It migh just be where its at, but if you did back off with the honey you can always add a little later on.


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## wineforfun (Jan 24, 2013)

No worries here with waiting, I was just asking as the recipe/instructions state 60 days'ish before it is ready. I already plan on letting it age for at least 2 months after bottling.


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