Ancient Orange Mead

Hi everyone,

I've recently made this mead and it's fermenting as we speak. As part of the process, I thought I would share some pictures and describe my method.

I must add that I am by no means an expert. In fact, this is my first ever mead! But it's easy enough so I urge you to give it a go. The recipe is a 'classic' and has been tried successfully by hundreds of people worldwide.

First, here's the recipe for a 1gal batch:

3 1/2 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) 1 stick of cinnamon 1 whole clove ( or 2 if you like - these are potent critters) optional (a pinch of nutmeg and allspice.....very small ) 1 teaspoon of dried bread yeast ( now don't get holy on me--- after all this is an ancient mead and that's all we had back then) Balance water to one gallon

I also added a crushed Vit B1 tablet to each batch to help with the yeast as it was going rather slowly!

Next, a quick pic of the equipment and ingredients:


And here's my method:

1. Sterilise ALL of your equipment thoroughly... I use WVP but there are plenty of other methods if you prefer.


2. Mix your honey with some warm/hot water and add this to the container. I emptied the honey out of the jars, then added hot water to half full and poured this in too to ensure I got all of the honey out. In all, it needed just under 3.75 of these Asda Smartprice honey.




3. Chop your orange and get your stick of cinnamon, clove and raisins ready.





(Bit of a pointless pic but I thought it looked arty!!)
4. Add all of these to the container and top up with cold water to about 3 inches from the top; this is to allow for foaming of the yeast.


5. Once at room temperature, shake it up well to aerate and mix everything together take a SG reading for working out approx ABV etc. Bear in mind that this will go down a bit when you top it up with water but will go up as the sugar comes out of the fruits so this will only be approximate.


6. Finally, add the yeast to the mix and stir it in.


Voila! Now all you need to do is leave this in a warm dark place for approx 2 months and you will have a nice, tasty sweet mead (well, melomel actually but who cares?!) In a few days I will top up with water and leave it alone till the fruit drops!


UPDATE: After two days, although there was a nice foam on top, fermentation was quite slow so I added a crushed Vit B1 tablet and gave it a good shake. You can see, the raisins had rehydrated and everything is now floating:


I hope you find this useful!!!

A few notes:

I know some people have used specialist brewing yeast to make this and find it turns out FAR too dry. I know bread yeast isn't what you're 'supposed' to use for brewing but the idea is that it dies out after a certain alcohol %age, leaving some of the sugar unconverted and producing a nice sweet taste.

Also, I've made another one with a lemon and a lime in place of an orange on the recommendation of a friend of mine. I'm hoping it turns out well

Kevin