JAO with other fruits and some experiments?

[ash]

hi,

I've done the JAO and it was great ! I did [screw] up by taking a couple of liters out of the cardboy, stabilized it and put back the amount that didn't get used. The great taste is gone, but maybe in a couple of weeks aging it will be good again.

Now, it was fairly eazy an felt like craftmanship doing this 'ancient'. I would like to make some more. I want to make 5 batches. One small, adding hemp. An othe small experiment with anis (like in pastis) and some herbs and leftovers from a botle of Absinth. (any tips about this are welcome. like: do I put the herbs in before fermenting or after)
I will also make one bigger batch from the orriginal receipe and twoo with other fruits. I plan to buy honey (200 Euro worth of it so I don't want to screw this one up)

Any sugestions for fruits? And will it work? All advice welcome !

Thanx !

 

[Chevette Girl]

Other fruits I've tried in JAO instead of the orange: lemon, grapefruit, green (unripe) apple, ornamental crabapple (terriffically tart), cranberry, date, strawberry, blackberry, black currant, red raspberry, black raspberry.

The ones I would do again - lemon, ornamental crabapple, lemon-date, and blackberry, I've done the blackberry one about 4 times now. The green apple and the red raspberry are works in progress but I'm pretty sure the red raspberry will be very nice too.

As for spices, if you do some reading on the forum you'll find a lot of people who like it in primary, a lot who like it in secondary and a few who do half and half... I like to put the spices in primary and then when I rack to secondary I taste and smell it, and if it isn't as pronounced as I'd like it, I add more then.

It's often a good idea to experiment with one-gallon batches when you're working out tastes, especially with spices... as you pointed out, honey isn't cheap. That way if you decide you did put WAY too much of something in, you can always blend it with something else that turned out kind of boring...

 

[Chevette Girl]

Request for Blackberry JAO variation

In an effort to stop cluttering the original Joe's Ancient Orange thread and yet still respond to a request about my recipes for JAO variants, (there, now hopefully the search engine will find this thread when someone does a search for JAO variations), my blackberry JAO recipe:
instead of the orange and spices, use two 6-oz flats of blackberries, squashed. I've done it with cinnamon and allspice and without spices and both are awesome.

The ornamental crabapples I used are the little tiny tart ones with purple flesh, and I use a handful of 'em, maybe a dozen. It's that tart-sweet balance...

 

[Lorela]

Thank you for your response both here and in the original post and for the link to your crab apple brewlog. Blackberry will be on next weekends agenda and crab apple for the fall. I have done all the sauce and jellies I can stand with them.

Lorri

 

[Loadnabox]

hi,
... One small, adding hemp...

Thanx !

Stay away from the hemp! There's a couple of threads about this, the results are apparently awful resembling what you would expect if you brewed a batch of lawn clippings.

The primary ingredient in hemp is oil/alcohol soluble, not water soluble so it doesn't get metabolized by the yeast and instead you just get the nasty "weedy" taste.

I'm pretty new myself so I can't say I've tried it, but I've read the results posted on these forums and it doesn't sound good.

 

[Chevette Girl]

Thank you for your response both here and in the original post and for the link to your crab apple brewlog. Blackberry will be on next weekends agenda and crab apple for the fall. I have done all the sauce and jellies I can stand with them.

Lorri

Always happy to help! ;D

I make fruit leather out of the crabapplesauce after I've strained the jelly juice by pounding it through the jelly seive... and I pickled some crabapples several years ago too in a sweet brine... but a great way to get rid of crabapples is wine or hard cider and you can also experiment with spices, I do weird things like add cinnamon and brown sugar to the used fruit bag and making apple pie wine...

 

[Echostatic]

I may have to start a blackberry JAO this summer, it sounds good!

 

[ash]

the hemp worked out super great !

 

[Twofox]

In an effort to stop cluttering the original Joe's Ancient Orange thread and yet still respond to a request about my recipes for JAO variants, (there, now hopefully the search engine will find this thread when someone does a search for JAO variations), my blackberry JAO recipe:
instead of the orange and spices, use two 6-oz flats of blackberries, squashed. I've done it with cinnamon and allspice and without spices and both are awesome.

The ornamental crabapples I used are the little tiny tart ones with purple flesh, and I use a handful of 'em, maybe a dozen. It's that tart-sweet balance...

Hey Chevette Girl -

I'm doing a blackberry variant of the joes, basically blackberries and the honey w/raisins and some vanilla beans. It's fermenting at about 74f. I have a question:

After 3 weeks fermentation has slowed way down, to like 1-2 bubbles a minute. have you seen that happen? Did you have to feed yours? What should I expect from here on out?

 

[Chevette Girl]

Hey Chevette Girl -

I'm doing a blackberry variant of the joes, basically blackberries and the honey w/raisins and some vanilla beans. It's fermenting at about 74f. I have a question:

After 3 weeks fermentation has slowed way down, to like 1-2 bubbles a minute. have you seen that happen? Did you have to feed yours? What should I expect from here on out?

That sounds like a normally progressing Ancient Mead to me. The airlock activity will slow and gradually cease, the must will start to clear up and then the fruit will start to drop, and the timeframe you're outlining sounds about right for slowing down, it won't bubble forever. You don't want to feed it anything, just leave it alone.

The yeasties will eat their fill, then they'll think about the leftovers for a litle while, then they'll give up and start settling out, and once they've stopped making CO2, the fruit will start to sink. Usually. Sometimes you get a floatie or three, especially unpierced bits of segmented fruits or not so dense fruits. I'm still waiting for the cranberries to sink in my cran-orange batch (started in november), they're being obstinate and I may go in and mash them with the back of a spoon or something.

 

[Twofox]

That sounds like a normally progressing JAO to me. The airlock activity will slow and gradually cease, the must will start to clear up and then the fruit will start to drop, and the timeframe you're outlining sounds about right for slowing down, it won't bubble forever. You don't want to feed it anything, just leave it alone.

The yeasties will eat their fill, then they'll think about the leftovers for a litle while, then they'll give up and start settling out, and once they've stopped making CO2, the fruit will start to sink. Usually. Sometimes you get a floatie or three, especially unpierced bits of segmented fruits or not so dense fruits. I'm still waiting for the cranberries to sink in my cran-orange batch (started in november), they're being obstinate and I may go in and mash them with the back of a spoon or something.

Excellent! Thanks! I brew lots of beer and seeing fermentation stop after a few days is normal, just wasn't sure on the mead. I'm really looking forward to this one, if it turns out there's a 5 gallon batch in my future

 

[Chevette Girl]

Excellent! Thanks! I brew lots of beer and seeing fermentation stop after a few days is normal, just wasn't sure on the mead. I'm really looking forward to this one, if it turns out there's a 5 gallon batch in my future

I've had meads and wines slow after a couple days and I've had some go on months... but the Ancient Mead style (3.5 lb honey + bread yeast) seems to start very quickly and vigorously and takes a couple weeks to slow down, a couple more to stop altogether, a couple more to clear, and a couple more than that to drop the fruit... but of course your mileage may vary, no warranty with this one!

 

[ash]

I have 2 batches sitting there since oktober. The fruits (one medlar and one strawberrie) haven't sunk yet.
The mead is clear for a while now so I'm thinking about racking them of the lees for some more bulk aging.

 

[THawk]

I have 2 batches sitting there since oktober. The fruits (one medlar and one strawberrie) haven't sunk yet.
The mead is clear for a while now so I'm thinking about racking them of the lees for some more bulk aging.

what's medlar??

 

[THawk]

I'm thinking of doing a Blueberry melomel with JAOM style. But thinking of racking onto the blueberries during the secondary. Would this work or am I being a mad scientist here? I don't think I can get blackberries where I am (heck, blueberries are rare enough as it is)!

 

[Chevette Girl]

That's another thing that I'd consider definitive about JAO-style, is leaving the fruit in long-term. Mash 'em up and stuff 'em in with the honey, leave it there till it drops. I think one of the reasons I think this is because you want all the flavour, acid and tannin extraction you can possibly get to counter the sweetness...

 

[THawk]

That's another thing that I'd consider definitive about JAO-style, is leaving the fruit in long-term. Mash 'em up and stuff 'em in with the honey, leave it there till it drops. I think one of the reasons I think this is because you want all the flavour, acid and tannin extraction you can possibly get to counter the sweetness...

I guess I could also do that... But that would raise the question of -- how much to put in (or do I just use Ken Schramm's guideline in his book; i.e. depending how much blueberry taste I want)?

 

[Chevette Girl]

I guess I could also do that... But that would raise the question of -- how much to put in (or do I just use Ken Schramm's guideline in his book; i.e. depending how much blueberry taste I want)?

I need a copy of that book... must strongly hint to husband in time for birthday

Sorry, can't help you with blueberry amounts. I haven't tried a blueberry JAO... and my numbers would be for wild blueberries, not the overgrown icky domesticated ones... I generally make my blueberries into wine the first time around and there's more than enough flavour for a second-run mel a week later...

I've also tasted a commercial fruit winery's blueberry wien and they made theirs with just blueberry juice, no water, and I actually prefer my diluted stuff, theirs was too strong and musky for me.

 

[kudapucat]

I need a copy of that book... must strongly hint to husband in time for birthday

Sorry, can't help you with blueberry amounts. I haven't tried a blueberry JAO... and my numbers would be for wild blueberries, not the overgrown icky domesticated ones... I generally make my blueberries into wine the first time around and there's more than enough flavour for a second-run mel a week later...

I've also tasted a commercial fruit winery's blueberry wien and they made theirs with just blueberry juice, no water, and I actually prefer my diluted stuff, theirs was too strong and musky for me.

THawk, I don't know about blueberries, but IMHO, Ken likes things stronger flavoured than me.
I did a couple of 'medium' mels on his numbers and call it a 'strong'
So if you're afraid of too much flavour, then add less than he recommends, or use his 'light' flavour recommendation.
After all, flavour is on the tongue of the taster... YMMV Ken may be a mead God, but he can't predict everything about everybody! ;-)

 

[THawk]

THawk, I don't know about blueberries, but IMHO, Ken likes things stronger flavoured than me.
I did a couple of 'medium' mels on his numbers and call it a 'strong'
So if you're afraid of too much flavour, then add less than he recommends, or use his 'light' flavour recommendation.
After all, flavour is on the tongue of the taster... YMMV Ken may be a mead God, but he can't predict everything about everybody! ;-)

I guess it's time to experiment...

Chevette Girl, how much lemon do you use for a lemon JAO? And how does it taste?

We have an orange variety here in the Philippines called dalandan. It's milder and sweeter than your regular variety orange. I'm also thinking of trying that too...