Cyser 2024 – Recap

Cyser – A type of mead that’s made by fermenting honey with apple juice or apples instead of water. The result is a sweet and tart drink that’s both a mead and a melomel.

If I’ve learnt anything from this experiment it is that I hate the name cyser. I feel it doesn’t match the flavours from the combining of apple juice and honey. 

Previously I’ve made a few different ciders, all of which have been made from apple juice from the supermarket. I’ve found the simplicity of putting the elements together without extensive processing into a fermenter and leaving it for the required time a nice change in pace from brewing.

My first batch was made just using plain clear apple juice, with a little lemon juice and yeast nutrient and fermented using a saison strain. The result was a two dimensional and extremely dry cider with some yeast character, but very easy to make and drinkable.  

I have since graduated to using a slightly better quality fresh pressed apple juice which yields a much better flavour, along with oak chips, wine yeasts and Orval dregs to make a cider with a character I enjoy. 

In preparation for Christmas, I decided to fortify this recipe with some orange blossom honey to make something a bit special. At the time I was unaware that this would technically be called a cyser, which I find is a far too spritzy and light sounding name. Here is my recipe:

Fermentables:

4 litres of pressed apple juice (equal to 440 gram of sugar)

680 grams of orange blossom honey (equal to 542 grams of sugar)

Other:

60 millilitres of lemon juice

2 grams of yeast nutrient 

9 grams of coach chips (these had been soaked in tequila to sanitise)

Culture:

Half a pack of D47 wine yeast 

2 lots of Orval dregs (pitched directly along with the wine yeast)

Technique:

The resulting combination struggled to mix in the demijohn, so I had to estimate the original gravity as 1.088 from the sugar content. I also had to ferment this relatively open using a sanitised cloth and a rubber band, as there was a lot of activity. After about 5 days I was able to safely move to a bubbler, but prior to this I was refreshing the cloth regularly to avoid infection. 

After aging for three months the final gravity had reached 0.996, resulting in an ABV of 12%. It had a dark gold colour, slightly muddy with a haze. The aroma was very rich and mead forward, tons of honey, with slight lighter undertones of orange peel and cooked apple. The flavour was somewhat the reverse of the aroma, super dry and crips, certainly apple forward, with slightly rich leaning undernotes of caramel. It felt like a dry red wine in the mouth with a fair bit of tannin coming from the oak. 

I think at this stage, any contribution from the brett would have been lost in the dry cider like qualities. The oak certainly had an effect and encouraged me against carbonating, so I kept it flat and let it age in bottles a bit longer.

I opened bottles intermittently throughout autumn, but I didn’t grow to appreciate it at all. Here are my final tasting notes from December which would have been 7 months from the brew day, spending 3 months to age in the fermenter followed by 4 months in the bottle.

Look: Medium amber, slight haze, after aging for some months no carbonation has formed, and it appears to pour quite viscous.

Smell: Burnt sugar, cheap honey, apples, leather, orange, and clove. 

Taste: Quite harsh flavours of apple skin, slightly bitter on the finish. All the flavours feel quite but almost sick tasting (without a clear infection). 

Feel: Unpleasant, low to medium acidity, too sharp, and bitter whilst feeling quite dry and some kind of sweetness all throwing it off balance. The tannins are felt but more so as bitterness than anything. 

Overall: No one thing is singularly at fault but more likely a lot of conflicting elements are pulling it in either direction. The honey is quite dominant on the aroma giving it a heavy impression. But the apple juice has made it dry but also acidic which only emphasises the honey’s residual flavours and aromas negatively. The yeast doesn’t seem to have left any major faults, and the brett doesn’t appear to be contributing much. if it has, it is only furthering the apple juice to promote dryness and acidity. The oak is similarly lost amongst the harsh honey but has also give pushed it to taste bitter. I also find it gives me a headache, so the alcohol produced is probably really harsh too. 

When it was young (before it even went into bottles), it was far more muted and smoother. I felt the oakiness was less harsh and bitter and the acidity far less aggressive. I’ve given away the remaining bottles as I don’t expect it to improve.