This brew is a late wedding present for our friends Aviva and Alex Fields, married late in 2017 in California. Aviva is a fan of Skyrim, so this recipe follows the several Skyrim-inspired mead recipes that have floated around the Internet.

Quite predictably, I'm going to call this batch The Fields' Wedding Cyser.

Ingredients in this batch

  • 5 gallons Tree Top honeycrisp apple juice.
  • 12 lb. star thistle honey from Sleeping Bear Farms.
  • 2½ tsp. Vintner's Best pectic enzyme.
  • 2½ tsp. Wyeast beer nutrient.
  • 1 packet Lalvin EC-1118 dried yeast, rehydrated in ½ c. tap water at 100℉.

Sanitized. Mixed honey into the apple juice one half-gallon of juice at a time by pouring some juice into the brewing bucket, putting some honey into the half-gallon juice container, and shaking vigorously to mix. Added pectic enzyme and beer yeast nutrient, then whipped the surface to add more oxygen. Rehydrated and pitched yeast.

Brew date: 13 October 2019.
Original gravity: 1.116.
Bottling date: 5 November 2020
Final gravity: 1.000.
Estimated ABV: Approx. 17%!

Yield:

  • 23 x 750mL wine bottles
  • 1 x 500mL beer bottle

Total: A bit under 18 liters, or about 4⅔ gallons.

Notes and observations

  • 2020-10-26: racked to new sanitized new six-gallon carboy.
  • 2020-11-05: Bottled, resulting in four and two-thirds gallons of 17% cyser.