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cyser bottle

Brew Log: Cyser (Apple Mead)

April 21, 2017 by The Mad AlcheMeadist

This Cyser, Apple Mead, recipe is from my third batch. I grew up with apples trees in my backyard, so it was only natural I try an apple flavored mead at some point. Not having access to the fresh stuff, I used store bought juice for this. I also got a couple small 1 gallon glass jugs that some of the juice came in that I was able to use for some smaller batches later on.

Ingredients – Primary

15 lbs of honey

4 gallons of apple juice/cider (I only had access to juice at the time, but doing it again I’d use cider)

For this, the apple juice essentially replaced the water in the batch.

Lavlin 71B Yeast

Ingredients – Secondary

Two gallons of cider
2 tsp Mahlab (Mahlep/mahaleb – ground cherry pits)

Original Gravity: 1.082

Final: 1.020

This was about 8.14% prior to the secondary cider addition. Although, I’m not sure how well the honey was mixed in this one, so this measurement could be way off.

Notes

This one had an interesting flavor. The 71B yeast, as I found out, tends to eat the compound that makes apples taste appley. It was pretty good, just not what you’d expect when you’re drinking an apple drink. It was like an apple wine. So I added some fermentation stoppers and then split my batch in two and added another gallon of cider to each half. This turned out really tastey. With enough apple flavor to satisfy me. This is one of my best to date. Will definitely try it again when the first bunch runs out.

While this one was brewing, I had also read about the Mahlab powder. I thought adding a hint of almond/cherry to it could mix it up a bit. I’m not sure how prevalent the flavor came out, I’m still experimenting with spices as I tend to not be able to pick out their flavors in the final product.

I have a friend who does not like cinnamon, so I left it out of this batch, but a lot of meadmakers will add it to their cysers, as those flavors go quite well together.

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