So for my first brew I want to try Joe's Ancient Orange and Spice Mead from here, but I want to swap out the oranges for the sugar equivalent amount of peaches. Will I need to change anything else in the process to accomedate for this change? The recipe mentions that he uses some non-standard brewing practices, so are any of these dependent on the ingredient choices?
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A Quick Question About My First Brew
- Thread starter tnecniv
- Start date
That's the thing with Joe's it works every time if you follow the recipe, especially the first time. JAOM works because of the residual sweetness mixed with the bitter of the orange pith, that changes as soon as you start exchanging fruits, yeasts and quantities of honey. For a peach brew I would look around for a proven recipe as most like to rack fermented mead onto fresh fruit in the secondary carboy to give it more peach flavour that otherwise would likely get fermented out if put in the primary.
With the exception of the optional spices, if you follow the recipe to the letter you will get a fantastic result. If you feel like you HAVE to meddle, then for Fortuna's sake make two gallons and mess around with the second gallon while leaving the first one alone. You will be glad you did.
Doing at least the first JAO to the letter is a solid recommendation. You'll never know the raisins are there.
And then when you decide you just have to mess with the recipe for your second batch, take a look at the JAO Variants thread, where we all share what variations work for us and why we think they do... my take on it is you need to find the acidity equivalent rather than the sugar equivalent (since you can adjust the sugar by the amount of honey you add, anything goes if the SG is around 1.125), and since peaches from what I've read tend to be rather light on flavour as it pertains to fermentation, you might want to try a few peaches and maybe a tablespoon or two of lemon juice.
And then when you decide you just have to mess with the recipe for your second batch, take a look at the JAO Variants thread, where we all share what variations work for us and why we think they do... my take on it is you need to find the acidity equivalent rather than the sugar equivalent (since you can adjust the sugar by the amount of honey you add, anything goes if the SG is around 1.125), and since peaches from what I've read tend to be rather light on flavour as it pertains to fermentation, you might want to try a few peaches and maybe a tablespoon or two of lemon juice.
