Quote History Originally Posted By JacobusRex:
Tried my cider a while ago. It turned out well but didn't carbonate. I'm still very pleased with it. I've also got a cherry apple cider aging and hopefully carbonating.
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I just started two different recipes. One a sort of cherry "cyser" and the other closer to true mead.
Mead:
7.5 pounds of whole cherries, pitted and frozen. I put those in a big pot on the stove and slowly warmed them up and mashed them as I went. Continued this until consistency was where I wanted it and temperature reached 150. Then I turned the burner off and let it cool. Goal was to get it to 150f for 15 or more minutes to kill any nasties on or in the fruit. Then I dump the fruit and juice into a nylon bag in a measuring glass so I could get an idea of how much juice I was getting. For future purposes, 7.5 pounds (at least of these big cherries) equals about 10 cups of juice. I then tied off the bag of cherry skins and set it to the side to throw into the fermenter as the last thing.
3 pounds of honey.
6 quarts of HEB select Montmorrency Cherry Juice
Zest of 1 large orange
1 cup of black tea (2 bags)... probably not needed since I'm adding the skins back. The cherry skins probably have alot of tannin.
1 tsp of pectic enzyme
2 grams of Fermaid K
1 pack of Red Star cote des blanc
All went into a 3 gallon wide mouth fermonster. Even though its a 2 gallon batch, I needed the extra volume for the solids.
Original Gravity measured at 1.100
Cherry/Apple "Cyser"
3 qts cherry juice
1 qt apple juice
8 oz honey
1 cup black tea
1/2 packet of Safcider AB-1
Original Gravity measured out at 1.065