What do you get when you mix apple juice, honey and yeast? A very fermented, alcoholic beverage called cyser. Mead may go back 8,000 years and cyser, a cider mead, evolved into a harder cider, becoming what many think was the "strong drink" cited in Biblical tales. If you learn to make cyser, you can vary the flavor, from something tart like cider to something richer like sherry wine.
Instructions
1. Gather your ingredients, including apple juice, honey and Champagne yeast. Brewers like using Champagne yeast because it naturally compliments the flavor of mead. However, it takes longer to age than other varieties of yeast.
2. Acquire the necessary equipment, including a clean, sterile bottle for fermenting, bottling glasses with screw top lids, which should also be sterile, a and drilled rubber stoppers to keep the cyser from getting polluted by any airborne bacteria.
3. Pour about 1/3 of the apple juice into the separate sterile bottle to make room for the honey, cover and set aside to use later. Pour 2 pounds of honey into the jar. Add back in enough juice to top off the jar, if necessary. Shake until the honey is thoroughly dissolved.
4. Add the yeast to a cup of warm tap water and cover for 5 to 10 minutes with a paper towel. Add this mixture to the mixture in the sterile bottle. Add enough of the extra juice to leave about an inch of space from the top of the bottle's neck so the yeast can work.
5. Attach the plastic airlock to the fermenting bottle and put the bottle in a secluded spot for about 4 to 12 weeks, protected from sunlight and at a constant temperature of about 65 to 75 degrees. Once the mix is totally fermented, you're ready to bottle it.
6. Bottle your cyser into the most airtight containers you can find. Unless you have really good brewing and capping equipment, you'll have to drink your brew up quickly to keep it from spoiling. If you've got the equipment, you could start drinking it immediately, seal it again and let it continue to age for several more weeks.
Tags: apple juice, sterile bottle, apple juice honey, , , plastic airlock
