Quick Apple Cyser Question

[DLKpunk]

About a month ago i made apple Cyser using 1 gallon of apple juice, 4 lbs of honey, 2 cinnamon sticks, some nutrient, and D47 yeast... I just racked it for the first time and it tastes great but i did a little research on Cyser and it told me once finished with primary rack and then refrigerate and drink right away... I was wondering if I should let it sit in the secondary for a few months or just bottle it now and put it in the fridge??

 

[Maylar]

Have you measured the specific gravity? Is it done fermenting?

I always let my brews sit in secondary until they're crystal clear. Age always makes them better. Just be aware that with a cyser you need to control head space.

 

[bernardsmith]

About a month ago i made apple Cyser using 1 gallon of apple juice, 4 lbs of honey, 2 cinnamon sticks, some nutrient, and D47 yeast... I just racked it for the first time and it tastes great but i did a little research on Cyser and it told me once finished with primary rack and then refrigerate and drink right away... I was wondering if I should let it sit in the secondary for a few months or just bottle it now and put it in the fridge??

Hiya, DLKpunk, And welcome to this forum and to a wonderful hobby.
Do you know why the material you found suggested that you refrigerate a cyser and aim to drink it right away? Sounds to me like that source was trying to create a sweet cyser but had no idea how to do that except to chill the mead while still in mid-flight to slow the yeast down. The need to drink it "right away" was presumably to try to hide the fact that even in a fridge yeast can still ferment and that if simply stored cold the cyser would eventually ferment dry producing enough CO2 to rip apart the innards of the fridge... If you provide the yeast with an amount of sugar they can tolerate then they will simply ferment that to alcohol (all other things being equal). If you then want a sweeter cyser you can stabilize and then back sweeten - they yeast once "stabilized" will not be able to ferment a single molecule more of sugar; or you can step feed the yeast more sugar so that they will die of alcohol poisoning and then you add a little more sugar to sweeten the cyser (but in this case you have a high ABV cyser - perhaps higher than you want: if you want to drink the cyser like a beer or cider then a high ABV cyser is not what you are looking for). Or you can allow the yeast to eat up every last molecule of sugar from the apples and the honey - then there is no more to ferment and then you might add a sugar that is a) sweet to taste but b) not fermentable as far as the yeast is concerned (Pure stevia , for example). But stashing a cyser in the fridge and needing to drink it "right away" sounds to me like the advice of someone who has very little experience in wine making. ...

 

[DLKpunk]

Alright so I'm going to let it sit in secondary for a few months then, thank you

 

[bernardsmith]

If it tastes "great" then although every wine will improve with aging the only reason to allow the mead to sit in the secondary for any length of time is to help the mead clear and (perhaps) gently degas by itself. If the mead really meets your expectations AND it has finished fermenting (it is at 1.000 or lower and has been stable at that gravity over three readings ) then you could mechanically degas (by stirring or by pulling a vacuum through the mead (about 22 inches) or by causing the absorbed CO2 to nucleate and then bottle. But the gravity needs to show you that there is no likelihood of the mead refermenting in the bottle.