"Perfect" Honey Ginger Cider (Cyser)

I've been working on crafting a good hearty honey-ginger cider for a while now, and after tweaking several moderately successful attempts I've finally bottled a batch which turned out exactly as I wanted.

When I first started thinking about making a ginger cyser I wasn't able to find any really good, authoritative recipes online. So I'm sharing my "more perfect" recipe here in the hopes that it may be just what you're looking for, too.

The cyser itself ages crystal clear, with a sturdy mouth-feel and a warm but gentle ginger-forward flavor which is perfectly balanced by the rich honey overtones gracing the tart apple canvas.



I didn't carb this batch- with bold flavors like this I prefer to drink it still - This sample weighs in at a heftly 8.5% ABV.

The recipe below is for one gallon, but it scales easily to any size batch.

Honey Ginger Cider

Blend and pasteurize

• 4 cups generic pasteurized apple juice
• 16 ounces honey
• 2 ounces fresh ginger, GRATED

Add to primary carboy with

• 1 bag black tea, brewed
• 1/2 teaspoon malic acid
• 1/4 packet cider yeast - I used Mangrove Jack's M02 because it was cheap and available.
• +/- 96 ounces generic pasteurized apple juice

A few notes:

This took me about 4 weeks to ferment dry at 64 degrees; honey is stubborn to ferment! The flavors were very harsh at racking, and I let it age another 2 months in secondary.

The ginger flavor was still a bit aggressive when I bottled at 3 months, and I was worried that it would prove to be too much. Happily it mellowed perfectly after another month of bottle conditioning.

I know a lot of people insist that honey doesn't need to be pasteurized, but I'm the kind of guy who wants to control every single microbe in my brew without adding unnecessary chemicals.

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


To achieve the desired strength, the fresh ginger must be peeled and finely grated. In other attempts with experimental batches I chopped or diced it- but you really want as much of the ginger to come in contact with the cider as possible.

It looks like a lot of material once it's all together, but this is really the best way to go for clean flavors. Here you can see the ginger looking rather wild after a few days in primary (in the front). Don't worry, it will mellow with age.



I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I do- I'll be making a full 6 gallon batch of it soon, and many more in the future for sure.

Going to try this. If I'm not a huge ginger fan (like the flavor but more of a hint of it) - could I or should I scale back the giner? Thoughts?

How was the titratable acidity (TA) in the final juice?

Why the black tea? You're just puting the bag in primary?

Black tea for adding tannins I believe. Normally it's brewed but each recipe is different. Following

Ok uk question. Ounces of juice... fluid ounces? Ounces by weight? Or something different?

Fluid ounces ☺️

The ginger in this recipe is pretty pronounced- it's to my liking but I think you could get away with using less.

globell said:

Black tea for adding tannins I believe. Normally it's brewed but each recipe is different. Following

Click to expand...

This.

So adding the tea bag... You say "1 black teabag, brewed" - what do you mean? As in a teabag that has already been used to make tea? Or throw the bag into the primary as it is? Brew a cup and add the tea?

Second question... All the above into the primary, and racking once dry and leaving in secondary to mature? Did you find it needed any back sweetening?

I ask because I am putting a batch of this on tomorrow once my malic acid arrives (I'm going a 12 litre batch). As per tradition, I am going to bottle half as still, half as sparkling.

My usual method is to actually just leave it in my fermenter until it has fallen clear. I use a big heavy glass vessel with a tap at the bottom, which is high enough that once fallen clear I can just bottle straight from that. With the added extra ingredients, I am going to guess this will not be suitable since there's going to be a lot of stuff floating around?

Lastly, does it matter if I use juice from concentrate or does it need to be just pressed and left alone? Not that it matters for a batch this size, the cost difference is about £6 for a 12 litre batch, but good to know for the future if I like the recipe and crank out a 100 litre run.

Ok so I have just set a batch of this away, I assumed that "1 teabag - brewed" meant a cup of very strong black tea, so I've done that. I've set 12 litres of this away, so simply multiplied the recipe by 4.4 to convert, except for the tea. We Brits know our tea, so (guessing again) I used half a litre with three teabags of B&M's finest whateverthehellwascheapest (Typhoo, as it happens) left to stew.

FWIW, I had to pasturise the honey slightly differently in your recipe (2kg of honey is a lot to pasturise! LOL!) so did it in a large bay marie but without apple juice in there, and it smelled (and tasted) amazing at that point, before I added it. I almost just kept the honey ginger mix to eat. All set away in a glass fermenter with a heavy lid, here's to hoping it works as well as it smells! )

Starting gravity of 1.110 - this is going to be a hellishly strong brew LOL

Well, I just bottled this after the gravity settled at 0.980 - so. Strong brew it is! Around the 13.5% mark.

2 and a half months it was fermenting and falling clear... When I tasted it during bottling it was harsh as hell! Hoping it mellows right out, the ginger flavour is VERY "there", but the honey is nowhere to be seen (tasted).

Of the 22 500ml bottles I got from this, I have done a 50/50 split of sparkling and still, I primed each 500ml bottle with 2 teaspoons of sugar, and have a plastic clear fizzy drinks bottle with some in too acting as my "canary" so I can feel the pressure and see how it clears. Once the plastic bottle is hard, I know that the glass bottles are carbonated properly and I can pasteurise.

Looking forward to the tasting of this!