If I remove the rind from the orange, will the mead turn out to be less bitter? Is this recommended?
JAOM and orange pithiness
- Thread starter MidwayMonster
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No. Any variation from the recipe will void the warranty. The pith bitter is needed (probably) to balance the cloying sweetness. The finished product is sweet enough with the pith.
Leave it alone and you will be happy.
Have you tried it according to the original recipe? If not, I recommend you do so.
If you have already done it and you found it too bitter,, put one bottle away for a few months and try it again later (it will mellow out, you'll see), and in the meantime, try it again and use just the juice and zest from the orange.
I have been breaking the warranty in this way for years because I found with my first batch that leaving the pith in gave me heartburn. I found the taste was just fine, the bitterness balances out all the sweetness, but since I'm good with sweetness, I like it pith-free as well, whereas other folks may find it too cloyingly sweet.
If you have already done it and you found it too bitter,, put one bottle away for a few months and try it again later (it will mellow out, you'll see), and in the meantime, try it again and use just the juice and zest from the orange.
I have been breaking the warranty in this way for years because I found with my first batch that leaving the pith in gave me heartburn. I found the taste was just fine, the bitterness balances out all the sweetness, but since I'm good with sweetness, I like it pith-free as well, whereas other folks may find it too cloyingly sweet.
Yeah, try it the original way, and then tweak it as desired. Helps if you keep some of the original around for a while so you can taste it as it changes.
I also now zest citrus, and don't generally use the pith, but I have made dozens of batches to tweak it how I like it
If made according to the recipe it doesn't turn out bitter.
If you remove the pith, it turns out very, very sweet a.k.a. unbalanced.
If you change the yeast from bread yeast to wine yeast, it will usually finish dry, and the pithy bitterness comes to the front a.k.a. unbalanced.
If you change the type of citrus fruit, most of them will have poor results - the only one that seems to produce reasonable results, but different from the original, is lemon.
Have a search and you'll see which variant versions are usable and which ones are a waste of time/money/ingredients/etc etc........ As pretty much most of the combinations have been tried and a lot of them posted about.....
