CrabbyApple Cyser
This easy homebrew recipe uses fresh pressed apple cider, fermented with fresh crabapples and honey to make a crisp, tart and balanced sparkling hard cider.
Ingredients
- 1 gallon apple cider Fresh is best, but you can use any that doesn't have preservatives, especially potassium sorbate, which will prevent your cider from fermenting.
- 1 lb crabapples picked over and rinsed, and preferably frozen before using to brew
- 1 lb light honey clover or wildflower
- 1 each campden tablet KMS
- 1 packet Wine or beer yeast I used CL-23
- 1 tsp Pectic enzyme divided
- Go-ferm or other yeast nutrient optional
- ½ tsp. Bentonite optional
Instructions
prep-work & sanitation:
- Crush the Camden tablet and add to the fresh cider. Shake well and leave for 24 hours (skip this step if you're using fully-pasteurized, shelf-stable cider without preservatives).
- Freeze the crabapples... This is optional but highly recommended, as freezing will start to break down the cell walls and increase juice extraction.
- Sanitize a wide-mouth primary fermenter- either a large fermentation jar that is more than one gallon, or a 2-3 gallon bucket.
brew your crabapple cyser:
- Heat 4 cups of water to a boil, and add the frozen crabapples. Bring back just to a simmer and then immediately remove from the heat and let cool. Do not boil the fruit.
- Add 1/2 tsp pectic enzyme to the pot, and 1/2 tsp to the jug of cider & mix well. Let sit one hour so the enzyme can do it's work.
- Meanwhile, measure the honey into the clean and sanitized primary fermenter.
- Optionally, hydrate the dry wine or cider yeast in 4 oz of water (boiled and then cooled- If you are using Go-ferm, add that to the water before the yeast). You can also dry pitch. For liquid yeast packets, follow manufacturer suggestions.
- Pour the crabapple mixture into a nylon or muslin bag in the fermenter. With clean hands, tie off the bag and squeeze the crabapples into a pulp to release their flavor and color. Mix well with a sanitized spoon to dissolve the honey.
- Add the cider and stir well. If you are using bentonite, add it now, dissolved first in a few oz of warm water.
primary fermentation:
- Check and record the specific gravity (SG). Pitch the dry or liquid yeast packet, and seal the fermenter with an airlock.
- Check the airlock to make sure that fermentation starts within 24 hours... if not, you may need to move your fermenter to a warmer location or repitch fresh yeast.
- After 7-14 days, remove the bag with the crabapples.
secondary fermentation:
- Let the cyser settle a day or two after removing the crabapples so that any sediment you stirred up when removing the fruit can drop out
- Rack the cyser into a sanitized 1 gallon carboy (jug) fitted with an airlock.
- Check and record the SG again.
bottle or keg your crabapple cyser:
- When cyser is clear and fermentation is complete, bottle. Fermentation is complete when the SG stops dropping and settles from 0.993 (bone-dry) to just at or over 1.000.
- Rack again before bottling if you like or especially if there is a lot of sediment in the carboy, or if you want a very clear crabapple cider.
- For sparkling cyser: Add priming sugar before bottling and use heavy bottles if sparkling cyser is desired. Leave the bottles at fermentation temperature for 7-14 days before cellaring or chilling. Don't overdo the priming sugar- be precise and use a priming sugar calculator online if you aren't sure, or use priming drops (hard candy made from dextrose and calibrated for bottling).
- Fill sanitized bottles with your finished cyser and cover them with crown caps using a hand-held or bench-top capper, or close the swing-top bottles.
- You can drink your still cyser immediately, but it is better if you give it some time to age and let the cider mature and the tannins mellow, even if you don't want a sparkling cider.
- Once your cyser is carbonated (if you added priming sugar), store it under cool cellar conditions if possible, and protect the bottles from light, heat, and temperature swings otherwise.
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!
