Batch 176: The Fields' Wedding Cyser
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.