Cider Digest #0440

Published in

· 9 Apr 2024

Subject: Cyser 
Date: Tue, 31 May 1994 18:37:42 EDT 
From: Jay Hersh <hersh@x.org> 

competitions are often a crap shoot.  The less well defined a category is the 
more this is so.  So for a broader category where substantial variation can 
occur there is much more leeway for subjective opinion of the judges. 

Obviously cyser which to my knowledge has no minimum requirement for the 
honey/cider ratio (i.e. when is it  mead with cider in it versus cider with 
honey in it?)  Has a lot of variability, therefore much room for subjectivity. 
In these circumstances it probably helps to convey some notion of your intent, 
assuming this gets relayed to the judges, then they can use this to score how 
well you achieved your goals, of course that will still only be a small part in 
that you can always claim "yeah I meant it to turn out this way" so you can't 
ever really eliminate subjectivity. 

For more info on the judging process I suggest trying judge-request@synchro.com 
which is a discussion list for BJCP judges 

        JaH 

------------------------------ 

Date: Wed, 1 Jun 1994 08:29:59 -0500 (CDT) 
From: gellym@aviion.persoft.com (brewing chemist Mitch) 
Subject: cyser 

NR706@aol.com writes: 

> I recently entered a cyser in a local homebrew competition. Becaues I like 
> the taste of cider, and I'm not as big a fan of honey flavors, I used about 2 
> pounds of a mild honey to five gallons of sweet cider. The OG was only a 
> little over 1.060. Although it did relatively well in the competion, all the 
> judges sheets came back saying "more honey". Would I have been better off 
> entering it as a cider, claiming the honey was just an incidental adjunct? 

With only two pounds of honey in five gallons of cider, I would still call it 
a cider. I have made a few cysers, the last having 12 lbs of clover honey to  
five gallons of cider, and I thought it still did not have enough honey 
character. Damn tasty, though. I do not have the current AHA style guidelines 
in front of me, and there *is* a cutoff point where after so much honey you  
must enter it as a cyser, but I am pretty sure that the amount you added was  
well within cider range. 

What kind of yeast was used, and what was the FG ? 

Cheers, 

Mitch 

btw, glad to see the list is still alive ;-> 

- --  
|                       - Mitch Gelly -                        | Zack Norman | 
|  software QA specialist, systems administrator, zymurgist,   |     is      | 
| AHA/HWBTA beer judge, & president of the Madison Homebrewers |  Sammy in   | 
|      - gellym@aviion.persoft.com - gelly@persoft.com -       | Chief Zabu  | 

------------------------------