Mazer's Log - 1.0010
Started a test batch for the wedding mead today. The plan is to use the Ancient Orange recipe I tried before, scale it up to two (2) 6 gallon batches, and end up with close to 5 cases of mead for the wedding.
Got 60 lbs of orange blossom honey yesterday from bumble-fuck South Jersey. Hit Whole Foods for some extra supplies today.
To start, I'm doing another 1 gallon batch, that I started today, and I'll start the main large batches next week. This test batch should finish before the others, at which point I'll try putting it on some medium toast American oak cubes, to see how that enhances/destroys the flavor. It should be a good match, but then again I've never tried aoking before, so I might hate it. Either way if it's a catasrophe I've only ruined 1 gallon, and not 12.
Recipe is pretty much as before:
~3.5 lbs. orange blossom honey (gravity to around 1.125)
1 cinnamon stick
2 cloves
1 blood orange (whole foods had Moro oranges - they're a much deeper color than the last orange I used - not sure what variety of blood orange that was - and it seems a tad bit tarter. Plus it has much thicker skin, which equals more pith contact. I'm gonna see if I can hunt down Tarocco oranges since they seem to be the better type of blood oranges)
25 raisins
Whole Foods spring water (to 1 gallon)
1 packet of Fleischmann's bread yeast
The water I heated to make the honey easier to mix made toe must a little too warm for starters, so I chilled it for an hour in the fridge before I added the extra ingredients and pitched. Pitch temp roughly 85°F. Airlocked the carboy, and it's already bubbling nicely.
In roughly 2 months I'll add some oak, and see what happens.