Home made Cherry Cyser

Toward the end of 2009, I got really into making home made mead and ciders. Since I was new to it at the time, I started making up recipes to test in 1 gallon batches. Some were pretty good after just a few months, some were just bad, and the jury was out on a few of the rest, which I saved to see how much some time in the bottle could do for them.

After I dropped my wife off at work today, and started working on our dinner for the night, I felt "the thirst" creep in, and decided to see what I had in the cellar. While I was digging through bottles of beer that I wasn't ready to get into just yet, I came across a couple swing tops with sticky notes indicating their contents toward the back of one of the shelves.

I didn't take any serious notes, gravity measurements, or anything else that a serious brewer would take, but I did write down the ingredients in case something ended up tasting worth making again. The particular bottle I ended up with in hand said only the following:

• 2# Honey
• 1 qt. Cherry Cider
• 2 tbls. Raisins
• Fill with Apple Cider

While I'm reluctant to admit this, the yeast I used was ordinary red star baking yeast from the grocery store, which made every ingredient in the whole creation available at fred meyer. The apple cider was unpasteurized and organic, so I suppose there might have been some wild yeast riding in on that too, but who knows what was doing the work here. I do vaguely recall trying this creation after about 3 months, and thinking to myself "yuck, this is SWEET!", which is why I was ecstatic when I tried it again just now, about 12 months later. This stuff is GOOD. I've been dabbling in store bought ciders and mead on and off since I started this experiment, and while I've found a few that I really enjoy, it seems like most miss the mark for me. This one would be a frequent purchase.

Sometime in the next month or so, I plan on making this one again in a 5 gallon batch. I'd like to take a few readings before I start so I can know a little more about what it is that I have this time around. I have no idea how much alcohol this batch contains for instance (although I'm one glass in and feeling pretty.. "loose" as I write this). Regardless of what the numbers say, if I can do a repeat performance of this beverage in greater quantities, 2013 will be a good year.