Recipe I: Cyser with rosehip (Æblemjød med hyben)

Ingredients:

10 L of apple juice from "Inger Marie" apples (English name unknown)

5 L of apple juice from Cox Orange apples

385 g of fresh yet frozen rosehip where all seeds have been removed. 

7.50 kg of my own garden honey
Zymex Pectinase enzyme + maltodextrine (10g)

"A fruit wine package" with yeast (unknown) pre mixed with nutrients

Kitzinger Port yeast (5g)

Now that all the ingredients were in place it was time to prepare my first mead. As always, all equipment was first washed thoroughly and then sterilized with an iodine solution.

Then it was time to boil the apple juice. I only have one 15L pot so the boiling was done in two steps.

1) Shake the containers with juice from Inger marie apples (2x5L) to stir up the sediment and pour it all into the pot. Add the rosehip. Once defrosted the last rosehip seeds are floating and can be collected. Bring the solution to a boil and let it boil for 60 min. It will have stopped foaming and the rosehip have become softer Pour the solution from the pot into the fermenter and cover with the lid. 

2) After rinsing the pot, the 5L of Cox Orange apple juice was added and boiled for 30 min. The pot was taken off the heat and the honey was added - all the honey. The bowl was rinsed with the hot apple juice to get it all out. The honey was dissolved in the apple juice by stirring. Then the temperature was measured to 54oC which was a bit too low. The pot was put on the heat again and the temperature was raised to 74oC. Then left for 10 min. Temperature dropped to 69oC. Then the solution was poured into the fermenter together with the rest of the apple juice. 

Why this circus with the temperature. The typical internet recipe tells you to boil the crap out the honey while skimming it thoroughly for wax and bee parts. But seriously - My honey was sieved twice, and the surface of the honey was cleaned twice. It is very low in wax and are are absolutely no bee parts left. Furthermore honey has antiseptic properties so the only thing to worry about is  wild yeast which (as far as I know) can be inactivated at a temperature above 65oC. The bonus is that the main part of all the great flavors in the honey can be preserved. 

I topped of the mead to 20L with cold tab water. So now, the solution just need to cool down. I do not have a cooler, so I had to leave it until the temperature had dropped to 35oC. The batch was placed indoor at 22oC so the cooling took a loooong time. I put a large thermometer through the how for the airlock to monitor the temperature and finally, after 20 hours, it was time to pitch the yeast.

With a hydrometer, I had used to measure the gravity of beer, I tried to measure the gravity of the mead. It was way out of scale. The scale maximum was 0.120 so I had to estimate OG to 0.140. Hmm, somewhat higher that anticipated. 

pH was measured with pH strips and it was somewhere between 3 and 4 so that was just great - no need to pitch any acids to the mead - that was the goal of using acidic apples :o)

Then the pectinase enzyme was added (10g). I was wondering if I should have added more since the apple juice was not sieved so there was plenty of  apple pulp present. I hope that it will be enough to clear the most after fermentation. I have clearing agents available too if necessary (I will find out in two weeks time.....)

I had purchased a "fruit wine yeast package" where the yeast and nutrients were mixed. To the best of my knowledge there is no chance that the yeast could ferment the sugar content, and residual sugar would be way to high for my taste after fermentation. Fortunately I had a package of Kitzinger Port yeast, saved for another purpose, which I pitched to the mead too. I guess the port yeast will take over when the other yeast gives up. I did not prepare a yeast starter. which I should probably have done, at least for the port yeast to let it get the best start. Therefore it took another 2 days before the fermentation was up and running. 

Now, the joyful bubbling from the airlock now fills the living room 24/7.