Ancient Orange Mead v2

My buddy Rex gave me about 6lbs of farm fresh wildflower honey. I’m making some more of Joe’s Ancient Orange Mead with it (because its the fastest mead I’ve learned how to make to date; 2.5 months) which we’ll share.

RECIPE
3.5 lbs of honey
1 cinnamon stick
1 clove
1 orange cut into eighth pieces
Spring water to fill a gallon jug
1 teaspoon of bread yeast

I put everything into a jug, except the yeast, and shook it up like crazy for 5-6 min (sore arms). I left a good 4-5 inches of head space in the jug. Then I added the yeast and put an airlock on top.

The yeast action was quite intense for the first few days. As it settled down I topped up the water until it was a few centimeters from the stopper.

Now we wait. About three months.

The last picture below shows this mead side by side with the one I made about two months back. It’s almost done.

Undómiel 2nd Racking (Jasmine Tea Mead)

As you’ll see in the video below this mead has been fermenting pretty steadily for the last month which is interesting to me because it was a slow ferment initially.

I use a litre of spring water to make some more strong Jasmine tea. I used the tea to prime the siphon tube and to top up the mead after racking.

 

It didn‘t taste very sweet. I’m finding all my meads are finishing very dry. I suspect that’s because of the yeast I‘ve been using: Lalvin EC1118. It’s a champagne yeast with a very high alcohol tolerance; up to 18% ABV. I want this one to be a dessert mead so I added some more honey. I didn‘t really measure it out but it was probably about 3 or 4 tablespoons worth of crystallized honey.

In the picture gallery:

 

• The Jasmine Tea
• Hydrometer reading before racking: 1.014
• Siphoning/Racking Undómiel
• After Racking
• The crystallized honey I added sitting on the bottom of the jug. (I expect this will all dissolve into the mead over the course of the next month.)