I started a cyser last week, a combination apple cider and mead, following a recipe by Ken Schramm, a renowned maker of mead. His recipe is a sweeter cyser, with spices.
3L of sweet cider, 800g of honey and 200g of brown sugar, plus raisins. In other words, a lot of sugars. With the cinnamon, this should, if all goes to p,an, be a nice spiced beverage on the sweeter side. It uses a yeast with a moderate to low alcohol tolerance, meaning a bit of residual sugar, i.e., sweetness.
Today, I wanted to try a different cider. I want it dry, not spiced, clean as I can taste wise, because I want to get it sparkling. A sparkling apple cyser!
To achieve that, I dropped the brown sugar entirely and cut the honey back to 550g. This gives me an OG of 1.092.
The yeast, with a 18% ABV tolerance, should eat all the sugars, leaving it dry, and if it does, with a final gravity around 0.996, the mead should be around 13% and the yeast be completely dormant, waiting for something to eat so it can wake up. A wee touch of corn sugar, maybe 1/8 cup in the whole batch, should carbonate in the bottle quite nicely.
Should.
No recipe here, flying without a net and basically experimenting now.
Honeycrisp Cyser Champagnoise.