Last year, my cherry cider was one of my favorite brews... and seemingly everyone else's. Few if any bottles were still around after that hot summer. I decided to reprise the idea with a slightly denser and stronger brew this year. This batch is half cherry and half apple juice, with a little West Coast buckwheat honey for depth and Wisconsin white honey for sweetness.

This is one of three batches I made on this day as part of my first foray into Lithuanian farmhouse yeast, Omega's Jovaru. I've been super impressed with Omega yeasts the few times we've used them, and this one sounded very interesting.

Yes, I named this batch after that obnoxious Savage Garden song. I'm not sorry.

Ingredients in this batch

  • 10.6 oz Bennett's buckwheat honey
  • Honey Acres white honey to a total of 1 lb
  • 1 gallon Big B's organic fall harvest cider
  • 1 gallon RW Knudsen's Just Black Cherry juice
  • 1/4 tsp Wyeast yeast nutrient
  • 2/5 of a pack of Omega Yeast OYL-033 Jovaru Lithuanian farmhouse yeast
  • 1.5 tsp Fermaid O, added on 10/20 to help fermentation along

Process

Mixed, aerated, pitched. I don't appear to have written down starting gravity for this one, jeez.

I bottled this batch on 3/29/20. Despite my note above, it looks like I wrote down the SG on the label on the bucket, and I'm pleased to report that FG was 0.998 (dry, as it should be) and ABV should be 12.1%.</div>