Thanks Silenus!
Do you have a simple cyser recipe to share for 5 gallons? I’m thinking something like a few gallons worth of apple juice and 4 pounds of honey for something like a 6-8% ABV. Do I need to use yeast nutrient when using apple juice?
Do I need an addition for adjusting the ph level (I was listening to a mead podcast while falling asleep and the guy said something about avoiding overworking the yeast for off tastes. Or something like this?).
Couple of more questions please.
I don’t want a super octane result. As I wrote above, more like a 6-8% ABV.
Any thoughts on say a pound of honey per gallon of apple juice (or other juice)? Is that a decent balance of honey and fruit?
Can I get away without using yeast nutrients if it’s a cyser and not a huge amount of honey per gallon? (I may up my game later but just looking to make a batch or two for fun to see if I like it).
Do you use a “wine whip” to mix the mead? This looks like an *essential *piece of home brew kit. Attach to a power drill and a) aerate wort, b) mix honey into the liquid for mead and c) degas wine. Do you have a recommendation?
Anyhoo, I did a 4 gallon batch consisting of 2 gallons apple juice, 4 pounds clover honey and pitched Nottingham yeast (since I have it in stock). Used Bob’s Red Mill Nutritional Yeast Flakes as yeast nutrient. I think I will apple jack 1-2 gallons when it’s done fermenting, and use Silenus’ Wonderbra approach for what get’s bottled. 
I listened to an old basic brewing podcast last night that tested 10 or so different Wyeast yeasts. American Ale 1056 was the favorite for being most complex. The Sweet Mead 4184 was probably number two and did a better job of accenting the honey flavor.
When I did my experiment those years back with about a dozen yeast types and a few gallons of cyser and malted cider ( i did something like 45 gallons of straight-up cider and 15 gallons of cyser and malted cider), I will say one thing: the cyser needs to age, like at least a year. It was frickin’ terrible three to six months out and only started tasting reasonable about a year out and good two plus years out. I haven’t done straight-up meads before, but the people I know who have basically say anything involving honey requires a good bit of maturation time before it becomes drinkable. I’m telling you this so if it tastes like ass when you first taste it, don’t give up on it.
Thanks Pulykamell. Hopefully it won’t taste like ass. I have experience using honey for up to 50% of the fermentables in beer. Just a gut feeling that a pound of honey per gallon won’t have near the aging requirements of the really big meads that most folks go for.
BTW, any yeast recommendations out of all your experimentation?
I posted it upthread. The best, for the apples I was using (an unknown varietal from a friend’s apple tree in Iowa), was first a spontaneous fermentation (just the natural yeasts on the apples, but this is a total crapshoot. Took something like one to two weeks before it took off). Then was the Wyeast 3068 Weihenstephaner (a wheat beer yeast. This left some fruit flavor behind, and the tell-tale fruity esters of that yeast I think paired well with the cider). Then the Safale S-04 and the Nottingham yeasts.
I did not like any of the wine yeasts I tried. The results are also based on not backsweetening any of the ciders, and having them ferment out. There was also a huge difference in young ciders vs the ones that were given at least 9 months to age. I wasn’t a huge fan of any of the young ciders, and those I could see wanting to backsweeten, but the ones that aged a year were fine as is, I thought. But I tend to like ciders on the very dry side.
I’ve since moved but knew a 5th generation farm family that made a barrel of cider every year. Aged a year before sharing. Holy crap the first time I had it I didn’t know any better and knocked back a few heafty swigs.
Hit me like a ton of bricks when it caught up. Wish I was still living there to get a milk jugs worth to sip at again.
Opps, missed this above. Yep, I’ve seen others that recommend the Weihenstephaner.
This guy set the Olympic bar for basement meadyeast comparison science. 94 pages later, this is his recipe postwith a photo of his flatbed truck with about 20+ 5 gallon fermenters full of mead in the bed. :eek:
FWIW, the Notty fermentation just kicked in today. I’m going to be traveling for about a month, so will be able to rack, back sweeten and bottle in about a month. Will see how it turns out.
I am also thinking to apple jack a gallon or two. Just pour into a well washed gallon milk jug. Freeze. Then let drip out until clear ice remains. Does that cover the basics or should I do something more?
Also, heard a podcast that explained to use bread yeast as the yeast nutrient. Makes sense to me. Costco sized beer yeast is a pound. Boil a tablespoon in water and add to either the yeast starter and/or the fermentation and Bob’s your uncle. If Bob isn’t your Uncle, please let me know. 
That’s cool! I’m glad I’m not the only one. That was my off-the-beaten-path yeast that I thought might be a good one to try, outside of the usual wine, champagne, and English and American ale yeasts everyone recommended. I also wanted to try a Belgian strain or two, but didn’t get around to it.
As for applejack, I don’t have any experience with it, but I do hear one of the problems with freeze distillation, if you get it up to the higher ABVs, is that overindulging will produce some wicked hangovers, because unlike traditional distillation, it leaves back a lot of the impurities/undesirable alcohols that proper distillation gets rid of. Just a word of warning. Apparently, they call it “apple palsy.” Like I said, I have no first-hand experience, but just something you should research/be aware of.
Man, it’s been almost a month in the fermenter in the garage, and my cyser is still bubbling a couple of times per minute. Granted it’s been below freezing recently in Seattle but it isn’t *that *cold. It’s only 2 gallons of apple juice and 4 pounds of honey. If it was just 4 pounds of malt extract, it would have fermented out in a week. Interesting. I’ll let it go until fermentation seems to end, cold crash it, and then put in a secondary for a week or two.
I’ve been listening to a bunch of podcasts on brewing, meads and cysers. All re-iterate the importance of aerating the wort. So today I managed to make it over to Home Depot and got a paint stirrer extension for the electric drill. It did a helluva job cleaning out my big mouth bubbler a few minutes ago. Nothing like a power tool integrated into the brewing process.
I remember my brew taking its sweet ass time in fermenting when I tried a cyser. It’s been years, but I remember something like 4-6 weeks. The apple juice should have enough nutrient for the yeast, but it’s not a terrible idea to add some yeast nutrient when dealing with honey fermentations. (I did not supplement mine.)
Why am I seeing Tim Allen here? 
I’m guessing that’s because the must isn’t terribly nutritious for the yeast, so you have to keep rousing it to keep it fermenting. This is unlike a typical ale fermentation with lots of micronutrients, etc… which tend to go off like a rocket and ferment out to 5-7% ABV in like 4-5 days.
The one thing that I’d be wary of is that homemade cider tends toward the bone dry unless you somehow arrest the fermentation (campden tablets?) and sweeten it. I made some once and while it had delightful apple aromas, it was sour, somewhat bitter and lacked even the suggestion of sweetness. Kind of unpleasant, really. More of a very dry apple wine than what I tend to think of as cider.
For several years in my youth, we gathered drops from the orchard and made many gallons of cider in an old freestanding press. This would typically be late September. We’d fill a five gallon cask, add five pounds of honey, and bung it up until sugaring season (late March). Pretty smooth stuff resulted.
Yeah, backsweetening was mentioned earlier. Silenus mentions using frozen apple juice concentrate. Personally, I like my cider bone dry or almost bone dry, but it takes about a year of conditioning before it really starts tasting good. The first few months it’s pretty terrible. But, yes, it’s still quite dry and if you’re used to stuff like Woodchuck, it won’t be anything like that. But it will be similar to a few of the craft brands that have an extra dry or bone dry cider. For those who liked it sweeter, I just mixed in a little juice or concentrate when serving.
It’s only 4 gallons but I’ll probably try to back sweeten 2 gallons, bottle a gallons worth dry and apple jack a gallon or something like that just for fun. Just playing around here. Not sure if I have the patience for a year long bottle conditioning. (I’ve been brewing 3-4% ABV beer and I’ve had milds that can go into the bottle a week from brew day.)
One mead pro suggested cold crashing and racking off 3-4 times to stop fermentation by getting rid of the yeast vs using the Camden tablets.
Campden tablets are Evil. Never use them. It’s better to wait and/or rack than to add chemical crap to your cider.
But doesn’t waiting and racking still leave plenty of suspended yeast? I mean, you rack lagers off into the secondary after your primary fermentation, and there’s lots of yeast there.
Is cider different somehow, or are we talking about some kind of serious waiting and then racking?
We are talking serious waiting. Cider isn’t beer - it needs tremendous aging to be decent.