Cyser Based Off Old Metheglin Recipe mead

This is my first mead batch, and it's based on a recipe I saw on the back of a mead-making book (a hydromel given to the Queen in the 1400's I believe). I adapted it to a cyser just because I bought a gallon jug of organic apple juice to use as a carboy.

• 2.5 lbs local pure raw wildflower honey


• 1 gal organic apple juice


• 3 cups filtered tap water


• 2 cloves


• ~3oz fresh ginger root peeled and sliced thin


• 4" sprig of new-growth tuscan blue rosemary


• 2 leaves of new-growth spanish lavender


• 1 5g pack of Lavlin D47

Process Boiled ginger, rosemary, lavender and clove in 3 cups of water for ~45 mins. Set aside to cool. Warmed honey in water bath to 100 degrees for easy pouring. Got juice out of the refrigerator early to allow it to warm to room temp, 64 degrees, and poured it into 5 gal. fermenting bucket.

Added warmed honey and used drill stirrer to mix thoroughly. Strained most of the rosemary and lavender out of the tea, but left all the ginger and a couple of stray leaves on purpose. Poured tea into honey jar to shake/dissolve the rest of the honey and added this to the fermenting bucket. Stirred must with the drill some more.

Added 3/8 tsp fermax and 2/8 tsp DAP to must, and stirred some more. Plan on adding another 3/8 tsp fermax and 1/8 tsp DAP on day 2, and 2/8 tsp fermax 1/8 tsp DAP on day 4.

Rehydrated D47 in warm water, 105 degrees. Once the yeast was in suspension, I added a few drops of the apple juice and set aside for ~ 30 mins. Forgot to take temp reading of rehydrated solution after the 30 mins/before pitching, but the must was 64...hope the temp difference didn't hurt the yeast. Next time I'll try to watch the this more closely.

Took a hydrometer reading and SG was 1.120. D47 has 14% tolerance so I'm hoping to finish at around a 1.015 semisweet, if all goes well.

Not sure if I'll add more ginger/tea when I rack to secondary. Leaning towards no since this is my first attempt and I kind of want to get a baseline sense of things.

I've learned a lot reading the sidebar and lurking in this community, so thanks for all your help everyone, and I welcome any feedback and suggestions!

Submitted March 29, 2015 at 09:27AM by McBath http://ift.tt/1BHs9ME mead