Apfelwein morphed into cyser - Nutrients, Camden tablets, other addenda?

I made a batch of EdWort's Apfelwein recipe, but substituted honey in place of the corn sugar. My recipe was for just shy of 1 gallon with 0.8 gallons of apple juice, 6 oz (by mass) of honey, and Montrachet yeast.

I'm told that by making this substitution that I made something more akin to a cyser, and that it will take longer to ferment out and to age. I had no idea what a cyser was until today, so I'm flying somewhat in the blind here.

I am reasonably familiar with beer making but I am new to winemaking and particularly problems associated with long term aging of wines. I understand that Camden tablets are used to inhibit mold and foreign yeast growth. Will these sorts of additions (nutrients maybe) be needed or desired for long term aging of this apfelwein/cyser?

I'm not really out to make a science project of this as Edwort's Apfelwein is about as low tech as winemaking gets. But I am curious to know what aspects need to be addressed to do this properly. I'd hate to wait months for a short gallon of wine to find that it turned to vinegar or otherwise went off.

I'm not sure 6 oz would qualify it as a cyser (I used about a pound in mine).
I have read on here that a pound of honey is 40 gravity points, so that would only be 15 or so.
I guess that would make it a strong cider rather than a wine, meaning less aging is needed. People will usually tell you to add a Campden tablet when you rack to secondary, in order to inhibit oxidation. Other than that, I don't think you would need to add anything (unless you want to add spices or something).

You might want to add nutrient now, but I don't think it's strictly necessary unless you're making a traditional mead with nothing but honey. You can use dead yeast for this, from what I've heard (boiled bread yeast or dead nutritional brewer's yeast), or raisins.

You do have a sort of cyser but I put ~2-3 pounds of honey per gallon in my meads so yours is somewhat tame.

If I had to guess I'd put my money on this behaving much like apfelwine rather than a cyser. I would expect it to be ready to drink in a similar amount of time. Mead is somewhat rough around the edges when young because of the higher alcohol content - I don;t think you will have that problem.

But hell, it's a gallon. Learn from it and move on to the next thing.

Thanks for the pointers. I suppose that is good news, as I put a similar amount of honey in an ale that I have in primary now. My patience is improving as I am starting to get a pipeline of my homebrew but years-long aging is not on my horizon, at least not yet. I'll have to work up to that.

So I am looking at a apfelwein with a boost with honey vs a cyser. My assumption is that honey will tend to add some dryness to the end produce (beer or apfelwein). This is standard clover honey from the store so I expect it will be pretty neutral otherwise. I'm hoping it tastes more like a dry white wine vs. a boosted cider. We'll see in a few months.

Thanks all!

Pretty much. Honey is at it's heart just sugar so it's not dissimilar to using any other. I suspect that any sugar at levels we use in a mead will exhibit similar properties (higher levels of higher alcohols) which would call for more maturation.

What you have there is an apfelwine variant as far as I'm concerned, but if I were to pick my favorite sugar in the whole world it would definitely be honey so I'm with ya there.

Yeah, I'm having trouble articulating a good reason for it, but dumping a lot of table or corn sugar into my brews just doesn't feel right. Using honey seems a little closer to the earth to me, without getting all hippy-crunchy about it. I think it tastes better fermented out too, but that might be psychological.

My best tasting batch to date (only been doing this for 6 months or so) was an apfelwein with honey. I did 1.5 gallons store brand apple juice and 1 lb of Sue Bee clover honey. At bottling, I primed with thawed apple juice concentrate dissolved in a little water that I'd simmered a couple cinnamon sticks in. It was only 3 weeks old at Christmas, but was so good I brought it to holiday parties.

Sadly, it did not survive Christmas...

spannerx said:

My best tasting batch to date (only been doing this for 6 months or so) was an apfelwein with honey. I did 1.5 gallons store brand apple juice and 1 lb of Sue Bee clover honey. At bottling, I primed with thawed apple juice concentrate dissolved in a little water that I'd simmered a couple cinnamon sticks in. It was only 3 weeks old at Christmas, but was so good I brought it to holiday parties.

Sadly, it did not survive Christmas...

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I assume by "3 weeks old" you mean it was in the bottle for 3 weeks? How long was your primary?

Thunder_Chicken said:

I assume by "3 weeks old" you mean it was in the bottle for 3 weeks? How long was your primary?

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Yep. 3 weeks in the bottle. Primary (Mr. Beer) was probably about 2 weeks. No secondary. Fermented with EC-1118. ABV was around 10% I believe. I think I added a little brown sugar too - maybe around 1/4 lb. or so. The sugar/honey were just what happened to be available in my kitchen cupboard.