Honey Ginger Cider (Cyser)

I've been brewing ciders for about a year, and recently tried a ginger cider at a local craft brew tasting which really piqued my interest. I thought a honey-ginger cider would be lovely, but I was unable to find many recipes online which really approached what I was looking for.

SO, I put this recipe together from several sources, and I'm hoping for the best. It's only been in primary for a few hours as I write this, so I'll have to update later with how everything came out!

I'm posting this recipe as a step-by-step tutorial for people who are new to cider-making, so some information may be obvious to others. Also, I've never fermented honey before (I think this is technically a ginger cyser) so there's a bit of a learning curve for me, as well.

First, here is the equipment you'll need to get started:


From left to right, front to back:
(1) five gallon food-grade plastic bucket with an air-tight lid
(1) auto-siphon
(1) carboy, 6 gallon in this case- 5 is fine too
(1) Large ladle
(1) kitchen scale
(1) candy thermometer
(1) 4 quart stainless steel pot
(1) hydrometer
(1) large funnel
(1) rubber bung w/ hole for airlock
(1) airlock
(1) bottle antibacterial detergent
(1) measuring spoon
(1) bottle Star-San

The ingredients you'll need are:
(6) gallons apple juice (I'm using what most people have access to: store-bought, preservative free and pasteurized)
(3) pounds wildflower honey
(3) pounds white sugar
(2) ounces fresh ginger
(1) Tablespoon Malic Acid
(1) package Mangrove Jack's Cider Yeast
(6) tea bags (boiled in 2 cups water, added to secondary)

Method:

Prepare a sanitizer solution in your clean 5 gal. bucket with 2.5 gal. water and 3 teaspoons of "star-san". This solution will sterilize everything we use throughout this process, and will later be sealed and reserved for reuse at racking.


Then, wash and sanitize the stainless steel pot:


Next, measure out three pounds of honey:


Add the honey to the pot. Next, weight out 3 pounds of white sugar:


Add the white sugar to the pot, also. Then, peel and dice 2 ounces of fresh ginger.


Add the ginger to the pot as well. This is what you'll have.


Next, add 96 ounces of apple juice to this pot to dissolve the honey and sugar during the pasteurization process. Here, I'm using store-bought pasteurized preservative free juice because nearly everyone has access to it. You can blend your own fresh juice, but I would suggest pasteurizing it all.


Now, you'll want to bring this all to 150 degrees and hold it there for 30 minutes. Stir as the ingredients in the pot come up to temperature, and regularly throughout the heating time to prevent scorching.


Using a candy thermometer, monitor the pasteurization temperature and maintain it at 150 degrees for 30 minutes to kill off any wild yeasts and bacteria. Hotter temperatures will cook the ingredients and alter the flavors, but cooler temperatures won't properly sanitize them.


While monitoring the the temperature of the pot, begin to clean and sanitize the rest of your equipment. First, wash everything very well with hot water and antibacterial soap.


Then, rinse all of the equipment well with the star-san solution in the bucket, soaking each item. Use the auto-siphon to fill the carboy, and slosh it around until every spot is sterile. Make sure the solution is in contact with every surface for at least three minutes.


Once the carboy is sanitized, you can begin adding juice using your sanitized funnel. Just add about a gallon at this point, so the hot "must" has a heat sink when it's added, and so its sugars will become more dilute.


Now, add 1 tablespoon of Malic Acid to the heated must- this is to compensate for using store-bought sweet juice rather than fresh cider apples. Malic acid is apple acid, so this will make the cider more tart.


Once the heated must has undergone 30 minutes of pasteurization, ladle it into the prepared carboy


Once all of the heated must is added to the carboy, add the remaining apple juice, until you reach nearly to the neck of the carboy.


Next, dry pitch the yeast into the carboy and funnel, and top off the carboy, making sure to rinse the yeast in the funnel into the carboy. Leave at least three inches of headspace in the carboy to allow for some foaming during the fermentation.


This completes the first phase of this honey-ginger cider recipe; now, we'll use the auto-siphon to draw off a small volume of must for analysis


The initial gravity reads 1.064, which gives us a potential ABV of about 8%. I expect that it will ferment out a bit lower, maybe 7%, due to suspended solids present in the honey.


Finally, seal the carboy with a sanitized bung, and set an airlock filled with 90 grain alcohol firmly into the center of it. We don't want any wild nasties to wind up in the mix.


This is what the final brew looks like now that it's set down. The ginger seems to have settled, and the yeast is in uniform suspension. I hope to update this thread in 24 hours with photos of lovely little bubbles.



UPDATE: 24 hours into primary, the yeast is already hard at work: The airlock is bubbling away at a steady clip of 1 CO2 release every 3 seconds. I'll update again when we rack it down for secondary in about 3-4 weeks.

Interested to see how this winds up. I did a raspberry ginger cider recently. Only made a one gallon batch, and I used 6 grams of dried ginger. That's not much, but it is pretty over the top gingery!

Definitely interested on the outcome. Thought about trying a ginger cider but have seen a wide range for how much ginger was used.

Yeah, the ginger was a real wild-card for me with this recipe- I've heard of people using as little as 1 teaspoon of dried ginger, and as much as 4 ounces of fresh. I decided to walk a hopefully safe middle ground.

I'm not looking for the ginger to be the primary flavor note, but I'l like just a bit of crisp zing from it in the background. I'll let you know how it comes out.

thelema5 said:

Yeah, the ginger was a real wild-card for me with this recipe- I've heard of people using as little as 1 teaspoon of dried ginger, and as much as 4 ounces of fresh. I decided to walk a hopefully safe middle ground.

I'm not looking for the ginger to be the primary flavor note, but I'l like just a bit of crisp zing from it in the background. I'll let you know how it comes out.

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What was interesting was that I just opened a bottle, which was bottled one month ago. The ginger flavor mellowed considerably. Amazing what time can do.

Dhelderman said:

What was interesting was that I just opened a bottle, which was bottled one month ago. The ginger flavor mellowed considerably. Amazing what time can do.

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How long has it been since the ginger was added, and at what phase of brewing? I guess I'm wondering how long the ginger has been in the brew total.

I've read that it mellows significantly over time, which is one of the reasons why I included it in primary fermentation, figuring that'll give it easily two months to mellow before bottling.

I've made an amber cinnamon cider before, but added the cinnamon when I racked into secondary which would have otherwise been my instinct here.

thelema5 said:

How long has it been since the ginger was added, and at what phase of brewing? I guess I'm wondering how long the ginger has been in the brew total.

I've read that it mellows significantly over time, which is one of the reasons why I included it in primary fermentation, figuring that'll give it easily two months to mellow before bottling.

I've made an amber cinnamon cider before, but added the cinnamon when I racked into secondary which would have otherwise been my instinct here.

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I added 6 grams of dried ginger and an unknown amount (forgot to record it!) of raspberries to a gallon of cider during primary fermentation. It sat in primary for about two weeks. I then racked it into secondary for not very long, about a week, then bottled. It was pretty quick at only 3 weeks from primary to bottle, and has been bottled for about 6 weeks now. I guess I'm about 2 months out since I started it.

I'm satisfied with it, particularly if the ginger continues to mellow. I treated with k-meta and k-sorbate and sweetened to about 1.010, which now I know, is WAY too sweet for my liking. I wish I would've just primed with FAJC and left it semi-dry and carbonated.

I have a question on the star San. Are there different concentrations. The star San I use has a dosage rate of like 5ml per 5g of water. This thread says 3tsp per 2.5gallons which will be way over the 1ml per g my instructions say. Are there different concentrations or do you guys mix stronger then package instructions?

Izzie1701, sorry if there was any confusion!

This is the star san product I'm using: http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/star-san. As far as I know this is the only concentration available on the American market, and the label indicates 1 oz (6 teaspoons) Star San per 5 gallons of water.

I'm making half this amount, so 3 teaspoons is the recommended concentration.

I'm not sure if the product concentration varied in other countries due to local regulation, so I would suggest reading your product label carefully and following its recommendations.

The Star-San product offered for sale in the UK, for instance, (http://www.the-home-brew-shop.co.uk/acatalog/Five_Star_Star_San_16oz_454g.html) indicates "1.5ml per 1 ltr of water"; there are about 3.75 liters per gallon, which is about 9.5 liters total for a 2.5 gallon batch of sanitizer solution. 9.5 x 1.5ml= 14.25ml of star san, which is about 2.9 teaspoons per 2.5 gallon batch of sanitizer solution.

I hope this helps!

I finally ran out to the orchard and picked up 6 gallons of fresh unpasteurized cider last weekend and decided to do a ginger cyser but I kept my batch much simpler.

Put the juice in the carboy. Added 2.5 lbs of local honey and 2 oz of ginger and pitched S-05.

I don't heat anything I don't add any energizer's or camden tablets or anything.

Keep it simple and it hasn't failed me yet. I am however interested in how the ginger affects the flavor. So instead of changing my whole process I try and change just one thing at a time.

My only issue if so far My fermentation temps have been warmer than I like but the weather hasn't really cooled much here yet. My hope is this will be ready for the upcoming holidays.

OP, you realize you don't have to pasteurize your cider, honey and ginger. You can just add campden or K-Meta. Also, you can use regular old Oxyclean Free to wash everything, just make sure you rinse VERY well and then santize with Star San. No need for anti-bacterial soap.

Good luck with it! Our temps here have been perfect, been keeping the house at about 64 degrees throughout primary. We're nearly 3 weeks along and things in the carboy are finally starting to settle down a little bit.

I expect the brew to begin to clarify and stabilize over the next few days, and we'll hopefully be racking next Saturday. I'll post another step-by-step when we do.

Newsman said:

OP, you realize you don't have to pasteurize your cider, honey and ginger. You can just add campden or K-Meta. Also, you can use regular old Oxyclean Free to wash everything, just make sure you rinse VERY well and then santize with Star San. No need for anti-bacterial soap.

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Is there some reason why "oxyclean" would be preferable to antibacterial soap? I prefer to heat-sanitize to avoid adding extra chemicals to the mix; if there's a simple way to do things which requires fewer additives, I'll prefer it.

thelema5 said:

Is there some reason why "oxyclean" would be preferable to antibacterial soap? I prefer to heat-sanitize to avoid adding extra chemicals to the mix; if there's a simple way to do things which requires fewer additives, I'll prefer it.

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Yes. The active ingredient is Oxyclean is a major component of PBW, one of the main cleaners. If you're going to use Star San, why do you need antibacterial soap? Soap has a greater chance of leaving a residue than PBW or Oxyclean, and if you're going to sanitize it anyway, why do you need antibacterial soap?

Here's an update on how this batch is progressing- we let the cider ferment for 6 weeks at 64 degrees until nearly all activity in the airlock ceased. We were seeing about 1 bubble every 20 seconds or so.

So, we opened it up and took a hydrometer reading- at 1.001 sg it's about as dry as a skeleton bleached in desert sand. This leaves us with a working ABV of about 8.2%



So it's time to rack the batch off all that nasty dead yeast and to add the tannis which we're obtaining from the tea bags. Wash and sanitize the second carboy, the auto-syphon, the funnel, the bowl, and the second bung as before. Then, add the 6 tea bags to the bowl and add 1 pound boiling water. Let steep for 3-4 minutes for a strong brew.



Using a funnel, add this strong tannin tea brew to the sanitized secondary carboy. The tannin will add a more complex flavor and better mouth-feel to the cider.



Then, place the secondary carboy below the primary, and siphon the clean cider down, off the lees (dead yeast and other funky stuff that's accumulated on the bottom).



You'll lose a bit of cider while racking, but that's expected. This nasty stuff on the bottom smells awful and will make your brew taste foul if you let the cider mature on it. Trust me, you don't want it hanging around through secondary fermentation.



That's it! Just seal the secondary carboy with a sanitized bung, sanitize the airlock and set it with some 90 proof vodka as before... and now wait some more!



The cider (cyser) is now in secondary fermentation, and will off-gas sulfur and other unpleasant flavors while continuing to clear as the malic acids are converted to lactic acids. Basically, the cider is going to mature. It should stay here at least 3 weeks (or much longer!) before the next step- fining, which will clear hazy proteins from the brew and sharpen the flavors.

Funny, I just put mine into a secondary on Saturday. Took 3 weeks to zoom down to 1.00. Tasted the cider and i got a slight zing of ginger but it's also quite "hot" too so we will see how much it changes after a few weeks.

kgressler said:

Funny, I just put mine into a secondary on Saturday. Took 3 weeks to zoom down to 1.00. Tasted the cider and i got a slight zing of ginger but it's also quite "hot" too so we will see how much it changes after a few weeks.

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I did not actually have an opportunity to sample this batch at racking because it was so fricken saturated with recirculated yeast (stirred up by the chucks of ginger which kept floating up and down during fermentation) that there was no point. It would have been YEAST and YEAST with hints of ginger, honey, and apples.

I'm hoping for the best- 2 days after racking off the ginger and lees, the previously cloudy cider has cleared significantly, and dropped another 1/2 inch of sediment- I'm assuming this is a tannin crash.


So We'll likely rack this again in a couple of days so the cider can continue to age in a clean environment. It may not require fining after all, if this trend continues.

Well, this cider has been sitting in secondary for a month now, and we decided it's time to try her out and bottle it.

We racked it into a sanitary carboy, and started sampling.


The brew had a lovely color, crystal clear clarity, and a wonderful mouthfeel. The honey was clearly present as a warm undertone, but the ginger??? Completely gone.

This was shocking. No one tasting this cider without briefing would ever suspect that it had ever come in contact with raw ginger. What the heck?

Overall it was fine, delicious even. The cider had a nice apple flavor, with a good texture and welcome honey notes, but the ginger really didn't come through. If anything the ginger provided a slightly bitter flavor to the product.

Following taste trials, we decided to add 7 tablespoons of dissolved xylitol and 1 teaspoon of malic acid to balance out the bitterness and brighten the brew... the result is a semi-sweet honey cider with very, very subtle ginger undertones.

If I were to try this again, I might add the juice of twice the ginger to secondary. I think that would be more like what I was hoping for.

I just uncorked a bottle of this brew which has been conditioning for 2 months now, which is about 5 months following pitching.

I can say now that time has been very good to this cider- not only is it crystal clear and simply delicious, some lactic acid fermentation has occurred in the bottle resulting in a very slight effervescence.

The ginger flavor which was previously barely detectable has become somewhat more prominent, lending a slight warmth and delicious background note to the blend.

I've also since started another ginger cyser using a modified recipe which has been bubbling away in primary for 3 weeks now- it's just a one gallon test run made with:
1 gallon apple juice
1 pound wildflower honey
2 ounces fresh ginger, GRATED
1/2 teaspoon malic acid
1 bag black tea, brewed strong
1 packet cider yeast
This was all pasteurized (except the yeast) and thrown into primary together. I'm hoping this recipe will pack the bright ginger punch I was originally hoping for. I'm sure it will- it used 5x more ginger by volume than the original recipe, and the ginger was finely grated to expose as much surface area as possible to the must.



The new honey-ginger cyser recipe is pictured in front- note how finely grated the ginger is. I'll update this thread on its progress when I bottle.

Your call , of course, but there is no good reason to heat this cyser. The apple juice has been pasteurized before being bottled. Honey is a natural bactericide (and has so little water in it that it will in fact kill bacteria by removing moisture from their cell walls. Moreover, heat will damage and destroy volatile aromatics and flavor molecules in both the apple juice and the honey. If you are anxious about wild yeast or bacteria simply add 1 crushed campden tablet (K-meta) 24 hours before you pitch the yeast , the SO2 that the Campden tabs produce when dissolved in liquid will kill competing yeast and will evaporate off to allow the cultured yeast to do its work.
Two ounces of grated ginger may be enough but I suspect that the ginger notes will be very faint. You may want to taste the cyser a week after pitching the yeast and see if you want to add another 2 or 4 oz of ginger to the secondary..

While many people regard honey as "antibacterial", this property is greatly diminished when hydrated, and so I am following the recommendations of the National Honey Board by pasteurizing the product before using it in my cyser. As they note in their official "Honey and Homebrewing" report,

“In honey, wild yeasts and bacteria are ubiquitous, yet they are kept in stasis due to low water content… As soon as the honey is diluted in water or wort… these microbes are free to grow and proliferate. Many homebrewers have reported a high incidence of bacterial and wild yeast contamination when introducing honey” (http://www.bjcp.org/mead/home_brew.pdf)

I prefer to avoid adding any unnecessary chemicals to my brews when a simple low-temp pasteurization will ensure a sterile must with very little change in flavor or aroma.