ToR Cyser

Base: None; I'm making this up as I go along.

Recipe:

Small baggie of Rhubarb
Huge Bag of Apples (20 pounds?)
4.5 Kilos of Howland’s Honey
Just a little Cinnamon
Yeast: Packet of EC1118
3 boxes Sunripe Apple Juice

September 20/00:

OK, I don't really know what I am doing. Am I making a wine, or a cider, or a mel or what? I was going to make an apple-rhubarb cider with the apples from the freezer from my mother-in-law's apple trees from last year. Then, as I was cooking the apples, I read a cider recipe earlier downloaded from the internet which specifically stated you have to press the juice from the apples first and never to cook the juice or they would be ruined. So now what? I added the rhubarb anyway and made a great smelling concoction.
I figure now I finish cooking this set then sparge it well and freeze the result. I'll make a cyser out of it next time I can swing some honey into my budget. The rhubarb-apple mix was boiled covered for 20 minutes or so which all but disintegrated most of the pulpy bits. Seems more efficient to me than pressing fresh apples., but I'm sure the experts are correct and I'm harming the taste. OK, boiled it and sparged it and saved it for later.

October 9/00:

Now I went out and picked an ice-cream pail of Rowanberries. I let them sit in water most of the day, then strained out the water a bit and shoved them in the freezer. I still don't know what I'm going to do with the stuff. Ideally I want to do a Cyser with the Apple-rhubarb and a mel with the rowanberries. But because of budget constraints, maybe I should just do a rowanberry-apple-rhubarb wine?

September 29/01:

Wow - that was a bit of a gap - almost an entire year. OK so now I have deiced to forgo the Rowanberries altogether and just make a Cyser with a bit of Rhubarb. Today my darling wife bought me some Howland’s honey so I am finally ready. I took the rest of the apples out of that huge bag and thawed them out. I put almost a potfull on the stove and am cooking them as we speak, them I am going to sparge the heck out of them and put that in the primary, then cook the rest of the apples and thaw out the Rhubarb-apple mixture.
I’ll get back to you.
Boiled the next set of apples for a half an hour as well. Sparged them out and kept the remainder for apple sauce. Some of it we tried to squeeze out through a nylon (no good - burst the nylon) and some of it I put in the blender at my wife’s suggestion and blended it into a sort of thick liquid form.
Added 4.5 kilos of Howland’s Honey to the sparged/blended apple and rhubarb mixture. A touch of cinnamon and sugar ended up in there as well - but hardly any (I was going to make apple sauce with some that I took away from the boil but ended up adding it back in).
The original year-old apple-rhubarb stuff seemed to have a bit of freezer burn and I’m not sure about how sitting frozen in a plastic pail for one year might affect the taste, but I’m recording it here because it may be part of the final taste. Waiting now for the yeast pitch.

Took Measurements: Temp 42 S.G. 1.052

A good start. Low enough temperature for champagne yeast, so I’m going to rehydrate it and pitch it. Used EC-1118 yeast. 15 minutes rehydration then pitched.

October 20/01:

Transferred the Cyser today. Didn’t get much of a taste of it since I used lots of mouthwash to avoid germs. There was quite a bit of thick goo in it from the apples still. I strained as best as I could but lost about 150 ounces or so that was just too thick. Topped off the carboy with water, but would have preferred to use apple juice (we didn’t have any).
This is going to take quite a bit of finishing and may take several months to clear.

S.G.= 0.18 ->-> pretty sweet
1.052 - 1.018 = .034 x 105 = 3.57% by Weight; 3.57 x 1.25 = 4.46% by Volume

?/01:Preparation for Clearing

There was maybe a second transfer where I added apple juice. I have no idea why I didn’t type it in. I know I added about 3 boxes of Sunrype apple juice somewhere along the way.
Weird.

May 13/02:

Siphoned out about 25 oz of mead. I need some for the Bentonite and some for the Sparkalloid. There is no room in the carboy to add hot water with these clearing agents, and I have no intention of wasting any Mead, so I have to use the actual Mead in place of the hot water in the instructions for these clearing agents. Who knows what effect it may have. (mwah hah hah) I put about half of the Mead into a pan and heated it to boiling, then put ½ tsp of Bentonite into a used 26 of Diet Pepsi Twist and added the hot Mead. Shook this up for some time, and now plan to let it sit until tomorrow after work. The rest of the Mead is in an open pitcher in the fridge for added to the Sparkalloid tomorrow.

S.G.= 1.000 Wow!

May 14/02:

I boiled the rest of the Mead (which sat in the fridge overnight) and added 2 tsp of Sparkalloid to the boiling Mead. Boiled this for 3 minutes and then put it back in the plastic pitcher it sat in overnight. Took this downstairs with the Pepsi bottle of Bentonite/Mead. Added the Bentonite/Mead mix first, stirring it in with the end of my long-handled plastic spoon. Then I immediately added the Sparkalloid/Mead mixture, trying not to touch the hot mixture against the side of the carboy. Stirred this with the end of the spoon as well. I’ll check in a few days (OK, I’ll probably check every single day) and see if it is having the desired clearing effect.
With luck, I could maybe bottle this stuff in a couple of weeks.

June 03/02:

Well, it cleared pretty good. Not perfectly clear, but definitely translucent. I can now see my hand on the other side of the carboy if I put it there. Judging by other mead batches I want to go a little heavier on the sugar this time. Of course I don’t want to overdo it, so I’m just going to go up to 1.5 cups of corn sugar. There is still evidence of a bit of bubbling in the carboy, but I can’t wait any longer! It remains to be seen if this is a bad thing or not.
I rinsed 66 bottles with hot water, then used chloriclean on them, then rinsed them with hot water again, and then ran the outsides under hot water to clean the outside of the bottles as well.
Left them covered with a towel until after supper.
Boiled up 76 or so caps (gotta cover the mistakes) and put 1.5 cups of corn sugar into some cyser and heated that up until it got clear. Put the cyser in the Primary and measured the SG, which was 0.998. After adding the sugar back in it was at 1.000. Hope this will give it a carbonation kick without glass grenades-ville. Put the cases of bottles in the upstairs storage cupboard to help the carbonation get started (warmer there). Came down to do some labels (after cleaning up, of course).

Alcohol Content:
1.052 - 0.998 = .0054 x 105 = 5.67% by Weight; 5.67 x 1.25 = 7.08% by Volume

Final Appreciation
The Cyser was quite good in my opinion. It had a nice bite from the apples. I even entered it in a Mead Competition, where the judges mistakenly blamed the "Rhubarb" in the brew as making it taste a bit too sour. There wasn't enough Rhubarb in there to even make a difference, but hey, what the hell. It was a very good brew by the Summer of 2003 to sit out on the deck with. Even my wife liked it a little (and she hates everything I brew).

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