At the end of April, I picked up honey and cider from the local farmer's market, mixed them with Mangrove Jack's Cider Yeast -M02-, and had an epically successful ciser in exactly one month!
In mid September, I tried to replicate my success threefold with the same honey, but with a jug of cider from the supermarket. The first week, it was Extremely Active! And then it went flat. I'd even added yeast nutrient when I put it together. After six weeks, I decanted the three gallons and let the solids settle out a few days with the goal to flavor each gallon differently.
Welp. Lets call this a learning experience.
Somehow, the cider went to vinegar, while the honey remained sirrupy. Not bad? It actually tasted like a very decent sekunjabin, even though I went the long way about it >.>
I cornered my favorite expert at Corn Maze yesterday, Rastaslar, and we deduced a scenario why this happened. The simple sugars in the cider were digested very quickly, especially with the added nutrient. Once they were finished, the temperature crashed in late September, making all of the yeast fall out before it could get a hold of the more complex sugars in the honey.
So, as it stands, he took a gallon of the stuff and I'm going to play around with the other two gallons. Now that I turned on the heat in the house, I should be able to add yeast again and keep it from crashing.
20250911 - 20251029
- 1484g (3lb 4oz) honey (~4 cups)
- 1 gal Beak and Skiff apple cider
- 1 packet Mangrove Jack's Cider Yeast M02
- 2 TBSP Fermax Yeast Nutrient
- Filtered and boiled water up to 3 gal.
- starting specific gravity of 54
20251109
- split in two 1gal jugs
- Add to each:
- 110g of honey dissolved in a mug of warm water and
- 6g Mangrove Jack's Mead Yeast -M05- until foamed
- starting specific gravity of 62
I couldn't get the specific gravity in between because I somehow kicked up the dormant yeast while trying to pour it into the tube and it kept effervescing, but the lowest number I could read was 60. I also started pouring the leftovers into some jars to settle out the sediments, but figured I might as well put them into a fliptop and attempt a "secondary fermentation" with just the yeast it already had, because why not.
20260525 update: This mostly got abandoned due to holiday travel and moving, but I never really got any activity even in November. I got a vineometer today and checked the old settled bottles for alcohol and they never recovered from the vinegar. Which is sad, because they smelled amazing!
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