Brew Day: Cider & Cyser

The cider from the Great Cider Experiment of 2012 seems sketchy.  I let the airlocks run dry and one  even changed colors to olive green.  I'd done the experiment to find a base apple juice to use for my ciders.  Back during the first racking, I sampled each batch and recalled that the one that tasted the best was from the fresh cider from a local orchard, Apple Country Orchards. So for my next round of cider (I'll watch the airlocks closer, I promise), I went back to Apple Country for some juice.

I decided to do another little experiment.  Both will based on EdWort's Apfelwein recipe. One will pull up short and remain a cider while the other will include a pound of wildflower honey and become a cyser.  But since it's a public recipe, I'll share exactly what I did.

I created a start 24 hours ahead of time with 1 cup of water, 1/4 cup of brown sugar, 1 packet of Nottingham Ale yeast from Danstar, 1/8 tsp yeast nutrient, and 1/8 tsp yeast energizer.

For the cider I used:

1 gallon apple cider (of the non-fermented variety) from Apple Country Orchards
4.5 oz corn sugar

I heated some juice up to 115° F to thoroughly dissolve the sugar, combined that mixture with the remaining juice (which was slightly cool), and then poured in half the yeast starter (about 1/4 cup) at an appropriate temperature.  Starting gravity: 1.060.

For the cyser I used:

• 1 gallon apple cider (of the non-fermented variety) from Apple Country Orchards
• 1 lb wildflower honey
• 4.5 oz corn sugar

I heated some juice (more than with the cider) to 120° to thoroughly dissolve the sugar & honey, combined that mixture with the remaining juice (which was slightly cool), and then poured in half the other half of the yeast starter.  Starting gravity: 1.085.  I'll have to cut the fermentation short or this could run up to 11% ABV.

Within hours, both bottles were slowly bubbling along with the cyser going a little faster than the cider.  After about 18 hours (so when I woke up Monday), I put the bottles (which were bubbling a little more than once a second) into the 68° fermentation chamber (aka, the old refrigerator).

Cider & Cyser, sitting pretty at 68°

Notes:

Style: Cider & Cyser (Note, Cyser is cider with honey or mead with apple juice, depending on how you want to look at it)
Batch Size: Two 1 gallon batches
ABV: