Limit of natural cider yeast.......... Cyser

[babalu87]

Took 5 gallons of the cider from a homebrew club "group buy" this past fall (OG 1.048) and added 8+lbs of Honey to it on November 3rd.
Cider is "all natural" nothing done to it.
Left it in my basement using only the natural yeast that was in the cider along with some Fermax

OG 1.119

Basement was 63 and dropped steadily on the 13th it was at 62, 24th it was 59 and today stands at 44.
I racked the Cyser to a secondary carboy and took a gravity ready

1.004!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This stuff is sitting at 15.4% ABV and may not be done yet.
Granted its young and needs some time but it is tasty

 

[DaveAllen]

Nice. That was a heck of a leap of faith on the natural yeast. Glad it worked out. Cyser is my current favorite homebrew project.

 

[WIP]

That sounds wonderful...

 

[babalu87]

Nice. That was a heck of a leap of faith on the natural yeast. Glad it worked out. Cyser is my current favorite homebrew project.

I figured worst case a small active starter of something else would be required to get it to finish.

No wonder our ancestors had so much fun with this

 

[babalu87]

Just an update

Bottle this up Monday night, wound up finished at 1.002.
Its crystal clear so I would imagine the apple yeast is done but you never really know.
Since its not carbonated I put some of it into 6 wine bottles. I guess if they start shooting corks I'll know the yeast wasnt done but I'd doubt that. Its been at 1.002 for over a month now, I think the only reason it went from 1.004 to 1.002 was the racking of it back in January and it was also still cloudy at that point.

Looking forward to opening one in the Fall.