Making Mead

The apple harvest wouldn't be complete without starting a cyser mead. Yesterday I decided to use up all the remaining apples from my tree. These were the smaller, uglier apples. I didn't want them to go to waste. I pulled out all my wine making books and concocted a recipe. Most apple wine/mead recipes call for 9 lbs of apples. I only had 5 pounds. That would make a very weak gallon of wine. Luckily I had some frozen apple/raspberry juice in the freezer. To the chopped apples and frozen juice I added 2.5 pounds of honey (no, not from my bees). Because of the raspberry juice this will not be a true cyser but more of a cyser/melomel hybrid. It smells divine. I'll pitch the yeast later this evening. I have to give the campden tablet time to kill off any undesirable bacteria and yeasts and then gas off.