Newbie wants to brew a Cyser...

[Crumb]

sorry for making a new post for this, but I've used search, and even doing that, it's still a lot of reading to do

I'm a new guy to this, I have no equipment, just have a local U-Brew Shop helping me figure this out (as she's never really brewed meads before I showed up at her door)

I have honey (12 lbs), I have apples... and I want to make a Cyser.
I was wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of a simple Cyser recipe.

thanks in advance.
-the new guy

[Wijnand]

Hi, welcome!

There is a cyser recipe in the book about mead I'm reading at the moment, the ingredients are (for a 5 gallon batch):

• 4 gallon fresh pressed apple cyder
• 8 lbs medium to full bodied honey (no idea which honeys fall into this category)
• 2 tsp yeast energizer
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• 1 lb dark brown sugar
• 0.5 lb chopped dates
• 0.5 lb raisins
• 10g Lalvin D-47 yeast
• Water to 5 gallons

If you want to add spices, the suggestion is to add those in 2nd fermentation and check regularly to see if it has reached your desired level.

There are a couple of other Cyser recipes in the Gotmead.com recipe section as well: http://www.gotmead.com/index.php?opt...d=4&Itemid=459

[akueck]

Most cyser recipes use the pressed apple juice, not whole apples. Are you planning on juicing the apples, or do you want to use them whole?

[Crumb]

Originally Posted by akueck

Most cyser recipes use the pressed apple juice, not whole apples. Are you planning on juicing the apples, or do you want to use them whole?

I was planning on juicing them. my U Brew shop has a fruit press that I thought would be neat to use. but I'm open to using them whole if that is a viable option.

[skunkboy]

FYI, it is a lot of work to grind, and the press the apple pulp. Not that you shouldn't try it at least once, just be aware there is a reason a lot of us buy our apple juice from cider mills.

[Chevette Girl]

I use crabapples in pieces rather than pressing them. I only just last year devised an apple press, but I've been making crabapple cyser since 2006. I roughly chop them and cut out any icky bits, if you're using bought apples that shouldn't have "extra proteins" included, you can just cut them into chunks. Ideally you'd want to mash them (crabapples are really hard and would probably break my masher so sometimes I'll steam them just long enough to soften them, shouldn't be needed for eating apples), but I think after a week or two of hard fermentation most apples will disintegrate anyway even if they were only roughly cut. And I always use a fruit bag for mine.

The recipe book I follow for fruit wines (Terry Garey's The Joy of Home Winemaking) suggests 8 lb crushed or chopped apples and 2-1/4 lb honey per gallon. She recommends getting rid of the seeds but I never do for my crabapple cyser. A 5-gallon pail of apples smaller than golf balls, cored? Nope. Halved or quartered, ickies removed, that's all I've got patience for.

And on pressing your own fruit: I go through a WHOLE lot more than $6 worth of trouble per gallon of cider I make. But if you've got all these apples and don't want them to go to waste, I think it's worth the work Plus, the apple cider vinegar I made out of the pulp was amazing. Of course, now I'm wondering what crabapple cider vinegar would be like... next year...

My suggestion, however you do it, is to use pectinase (pectic enzyme). Apples contain a lot of pectin and it can sometimes cause wines and meads to stay hazy.

[akueck]

More power to you if you want to juice those apples yourself. I'm not quite that industrious (yet?) and stick to professionally-processed stuff.

IMO using the juice (however you get it) is a lot easier than doing whole apple chunks. Lots of fiber in those apples and you have to do a fair bit of work to get them chopped up, unlike berries which you can just mash a bit. But either will make a good cyser.

[fivecats]

Originally Posted by Crumb

I have honey (12 lbs), I have apples... and I want to make a Cyser.

I just love this line. Thanks for a smile this morning, Crumb.

Say, ChevetteGirl, if you're using chopped apples, are you adding in additional water to the fermenter? I do a lot of applesauce and apple butter canning during the fall and adding in another box-worth of apples to peel and core for a cyser sounds like a somewhat cheaper alternative to buying gallons of cider. (Cheaper, not easier)

[Chevette Girl]

Originally Posted by fivecats

Say, ChevetteGirl, if you're using chopped apples, are you adding in additional water to the fermenter? I do a lot of applesauce and apple butter canning during the fall and adding in another box-worth of apples to peel and core for a cyser sounds like a somewhat cheaper alternative to buying gallons of cider. (Cheaper, not easier)

With the crabapples, yes I definitely would need to add water, I think the pucker-power would be pretty powerful using straight crabapple juice plus the amount of apples needed would be insane.

The first non-grape batch of wine I ever made was from canned apple juice, and it was watered down (I think one can of apple juice topped to a gallon with water and sugar), and still tastes quite apply. I haven't actually tried the ones I made with my own cider yet (still cloudy), but I imagine they will be a much stronger apple flavour than bagged and watered apple wine/mead. But bagged and watered still works.

It does work if you treat it like any other fruit in a melomel except using more (2-3X more) pounds per gallon since the taste is pretty dilute. Of my two fruit wine reference books, one says you need 25 lb apples, crushed and pressed, to make 1 gal of juice without adding water, and the other one says to use 8 lbs apples. Oh, and I wouldn't bother peeling them, just tip and top them, chop and mash as best you can. Makes life easier and also you get nice pink colour if they're red apples (fades to a pretty gold)! I don't core my crabapples (I cannot imagine how long that would take!) so I never bother coring real apples for fermenting either.