Xenia brought home a gallon of Mrs. Gooch’s apple juice from Whole Foods. It comes in a one-gallon glass jug that can can be used to brew in for $6.99, which is ninety-nine cents more than an empty one-gallon glass carboy at the local homebrew store. The apple juice is not as delicious as I remember it being from my childhood—it’s actually kind of thin and generic—but I’m not sure whether that’s because the juice has changed or because my taste is better. In any case, there will hopefully be some tasty cyser in a month or two.

2016-05-30_22_26_58_HDR
Brewing Batch 006.

We're going to call this recipe Goochy Cyser.

Ingredients in this batch

Yield: five 12-ounce bottles (we lost a lot to multiple rackings).

Pulled out a quart of apple juice to make room, then dumped as much as possible of the honey into the jug through a funnel. Gradually heated two cups of the apple juice in the microwave and used it to extract the remaining honey from the honey containers. Then pulled out half a cup of the apple-honey must into a santized measuring cup and poured in another half-cup of the remaining apple juice to reduce the gravity of the must to an acceptable range to start the yeast. Pitched half of a packet of White Labs WLP001 into the measuring cup and covered it to keep out extraneous microorganisms. Agitated the must vigorously in the jug for seven minutes, then pitched the yeast starter after it had sat for fifteen minutes. Measured the gravity with the hydrometer and put in a fermentation lock.

Original gravity: 1.102.
Final gravity: 1.010.
Estimated ABV: 12.1%

Observations

  • 2016-06-01T10:48:00: There's foam in the carboy.
  • 2016-06-12T20:25: Returned from a week and a half on the road. Fermentation continues in the carboy. There's lots of spent yeast on the bottom, and there's stil a quarter-inch of thick krausen on top of the fermenting must.
  • 2016-07-09T20:17: Tasted (still hot with fusel alcohols) and racked into a clean new carboy and off of the crap that dropped out during fermentation. If we rack this two or three more times, there'll be nothing left. Gravity at the time was 1.022, giving an approximate ABV of 10.6% at that time.

Tasting notes

  • 2016-10-25T01:41: Woah, this has gotten tasty: appley and clear and semi-carbonated. It's rather sweet and would benefit from more malic acid, I think. Maybe we should add in an acid blend next time.

Lessons Learned

  • The gravity of Mrs Gooch's apple juice without any honey added is 1.044. We measured this for science. FOR SCIENCE!