Fumbling My Way Through Cyser

[Nyx]

Hello all! I am well known to be led astray by cool things I see online, and the most recent topic to catch my imagination is cysers. I am a rank newbie and have two batches going so far. The first is 1 gallon: mulled apple cider (made my own by cooking down and pressing apples and spices), 3 lbs honey, 1 packet of mead yeast (said it was good up to 4 gallons), and a dose of adventurous spirit.

I have gotten it through primary for a week, let the yeast fall dramatically to its death, then racked off into secondary. It currently sits in my pantry with an airlock turning a gorgeous dark amber color. Now to my question: information on what to do next varies wildly, and I am deeply lost. I am reading to let it "age" there in secondary anywhere from 30 days to 4 years. For obvious reasons I would like to have a more specific window on when the heck to bottle the stuff and get it into the fridge. Letting an unpasteurized food product just hang around at room temp in my pantry makes me uncomfortable at best. Help please!

 

[darigoni]

There was no reason to rack it after only 1 week. Even after the the yeast are done making alcohol, they are still working to do some cleanup.

What is "adventurous spirit"?

Why is you airlock turning a "dark amber color"? It should be clear, with either clean water or cheap vodka. No reason not to remove the airlock, clean it and refill it.

There's alcohol in your product, so no need to worry about it being unpasteurized.

One of the things you'll learn is to slow down. The longer you wait the more "stuff" will fall out and not end up in your bottles.

That being said, you can bottle anytime YOU want. It's your mead. But, you might want to wait 2-4 weeks and when it's become crystal clear.

 

[Nyx]

There was no reason to rack it after only 1 week. Even after the the yeast are done making alcohol, they are still working to do some cleanup.

What is "adventurous spirit"?

Why is you airlock turning a "dark amber color"? It should be clear, with either clean water or cheap vodka. No reason not to remove the airlock, clean it and refill it.

There's alcohol in your product, so no need to worry about it being unpasteurized.

One of the things you'll learn is to slow down. The longer you wait the more "stuff" will fall out and not end up in your bottles.

That being said, you can bottle anytime YOU want. It's your mead. But, you might want to wait 2-4 weeks and when it's become crystal clear.

Thank you for replying! Everything I read online said to end primary when the yeast died and fell to the bottom because the lees would make the flavor bad if it sat too long.

The airlock is filled with clear water, it is the cyser that is turning a beautiful amber color. At this point I can't really change what I've already done, I just need to know generally how long to leave it in secondary. I know I have free will and can 'do what I want' but I'd like advice on the best timing from people with experience .

 

[Squatchy]

When you are a newbee and don't have much to drink you end up drinking it before it has had a change to age enough to get any changes. One year is a good start. But you won't do that. Stabilize it. Let it age 3-4 months and then do your final tweaking.

 

[Maylar]

Invest in a hydrometer so you can measure the progress of your mead and know for sure when it's done.

 

[Nyx]

Invest in a hydrometer so you can measure the progress of your mead and know for sure when it's done.

Thank you! I feel like this answer is addressing secondary itself, which is my question. For some reason everyone thinks I am asking about aging, and I really am not.

So I think you are saying that I should stop secondary once I get to the target ABU? I was planning on doing secondary for 30 days because I thought it was primarily about clarifying and most of the alcohol would be already done by primary, but your answer is very helpful! Please let me know if I am really off track and misunderstood you

 

[Maylar]

Typically, we wait for primary to finish before racking to secondary, but you're already past that. The criteria for being finished is that the specific gravity hasn't changed for a week. Or, with most wine or mead yeasts the SG is in the 1.000 ish range. A gravity reading now would tell you if there is still more sugar for the yeast to eat or if it's done fermenting. Honestly, if you're willing to wait a month for secondary to clear there's little chance (but not impossible) that fermentation hasn't stopped by then.

We consider a hydrometer to be the mead / wine / beer maker's most important tool. Knowing what the starting and ending gravity are lets you know the ABV. Readings along the way tell you how it's all progressing.

 

[Chevette Girl]

Don't worry too much, you probably didn't ruin it. Even if a lot of yeast has sunk to the bottom, there's still a lot in suspension, what's left should continue working on any sugars remaining. And for next batch, according to what I've read around here, even the yeast that tends to be worst about off flavours if lees are left too long still takes at least a month for any degradation to start. I've left a few batches on the lees for embarrassingly too long with not a lot of off flavours, though I have also had the other thing. I'm just trying to say don't panic if your primary takes longer than a couple weeks. Just stir it every few days to keep things moving. along. And even if racking it early did stall the fermentation, it might just be a bit on the sweeter side than you were hoping for. Or maybe you wanted it sweet and it's a happy accident!

Have you tasted it? Is it still sweet or has it gone dry? Depending on how much honey you added, it's possible it could have been done in a week. Having a hydrometer will tell you when primary is done.

Hopefully you'll get into the habit of taking really detailed notes about each batch in case you have an extreme result, like it's awesome and you want to do it again by repeating the happy accident, or it's horrid and you want to figure out where you went wrong so you can not repeat that mistake, And sometimes it's about finding out your individual taste, I thought I was doing something wrong for years (ok, I probably also was doingmany things wrong) because I never been very enthusiastic about most of my dry meads, but it turns out I prefer things a bit sweeter, so the biggest mistake I was making was not backsweetening to my taste (the "final tweaking" mentioned above by Squatchy). Yeah I was probably doing a bunch of things that kept it from being a better mead than it was, but I was missing the critical element that would have made it be something I was excited to drink rather than something I drank anyways so it wouldn't go to waste.

Any new hobby involves making mistakes, but also hopefully also enough research to avoid some critical ones people have already made for you, and to avoid repeating the same mistakes. And learning how to correct mistakes once you've made them is an important learning tool too.

Happy meadmaking!