Joe's Ancient Orange Mead

Mead.  I don't know much about it.  An old drink.  An ancient drink.  This was another recipe I got on the interwebs.  I noticed they were selling it at King Richard's Faire in tiny little cups and it's definitely got a vibe that says drink me before a roaring fire while plotting the doom of your enemies. This particular mead is a well known and very simple recipe that requires only supermarket ingredients, a gallon fermenter and time.  It's called Joe's Ancient Orange Mead (aka JAOM.)

The ingredient list is pretty basic.  3.5 lbs of honey, a large orange, a handful of raisins, a whole clove and one cinnamon stick.  Oh and basic bread yeast.

 The honey gets mixed with some warm water.

Once all the honey is mixed in, it goes into my super expensive high-tech fermenter.  The orange gets cut into eight pieces.

The orange slices are shoved into the bottle, rind and all.  Messy!

 There you go.  A jug full of honey, water and orange.

Now I add the raisins, cinnamon stick and clove.

I add more water, put the cap on the jug and shake it robustly.  Then a teaspoon of bread yeast is added.

All done.  The JAOM will now keep the Apfelwein company.

The recipe calls for leaving some headspace in the jug in case the fermentation is powerful.   Just as predicted, the fermentation began almost immediately.  Millions of little bubbles are constantly rising to the top.  I topped it off with water after a few days when I was sure the krausen wasn't going to be an issue.

It'll stay in the jug until it clears up and the fruit sinks to the bottom.  Then it'll get bottled.  By all accounts it can and should age for a long time (6 months to a year or longer) in order to really shine.  We'll see what comes of this concoction.  For the King!