Citrus Mead—A Metheglin
Source: Sir Kenelme Digbie, updated by Michael Tighe
Mead Lover's Digest #211, 21 September, 1993
Ingredients:
- 10 lbs honey
- Citrus peel (about ¾ the skin of one orange)
- Sliced ginger (about the size of a thumb)
- Yeast
Directions:
- Make a basic mead with 2 lbs of honey per gallon. Use a clover honey or a light wildflower honey for this recipe. Just before taking the must off the boil, add a small amount of sliced ginger (about the size of one's thumb for a 5-gallon batch) and then add the thinnest peel of orange skin (about ¾ of the skin of the orange). Be careful not to get the white pith of the skin—it leaves a bitter/soapy aftertaste.
- Let it cool naturally about ¾ hour (longer for larger batches) and then remove the ginger and orange peel. Put in a carboy to cool, then add yeast and let it go for three to six weeks (I usually let it go till it starts to clear). Bottle, let sit for another week or two (to charge the bottles) and then chill and serve.
Notes:
I've made this with lemon peel or grapefruit peel instead of orange peel, and all taste great! If you use orange blossom honey, use orange peel rather than some other citrus fruit—it really enhances the flavor! Grapefruit is the strongest flavor, and the most likely to be bitter/harsh, so use less of it than for orange or lemon. Leave some of the ginger and the skin in the must during fermentation for stronger flavor.
Use less ginger and less citrus skin for the first batches, and then increase the amounts till you get the exact flavor you want. (One friend used a pound of ginger per gallon! And he liked it!)
The slow-cool method (rather than using a chiller) is supposed to be part of what makes the flavor great.
I prefer mead yeasts if possible, but champagne or general purpose wine yeast works fine. This should create a slightly sweet mead with an alcohol content of three or four percent.
Dave's Notes:
Clayton Cone from Lallemand got asked about putting orange (or other citrus zest) into mead, and he pointed out that The substance involved is d-limonine, one of the oils present in orange peel. It kills micro-organisms. Including yeast. The zest of one citrus fruit per liter of must is definitely enough to kill yeast.
After much discussion on the Mead Lover's Digest, we figured that best practice was to add the citrus zest late in fermentation (you can freeze it after you take it off the fruit when initially making your mead), when you've reached the point of not being certain if the fermentation is complete or not. But if you are looking to bottle-carbonate, be aware that a lot of zest may prevent the yeast from carbonating the mead in the bottles, and you may end up with a sweet mead, rather than a bubbly one.