I thought I’d bring up an amazing lesser-known brew called cyser. This beverage has ancient origin and can be the most amazing beverage you will ever touch to your tongue. Using the right apples and a good quality honey can create a rich, crisp, even buttery apple flavor that will likely make you regret having to swallow each sip. Cyser is usually produced in very small batches commercially and it is pretty darn hard to find a bottle to buy short of importing it from a small meadery somewhere in Europe. There is actually an eHow article on how to find it and buy it, if you want to skip the brewing and go straight to the tasting, but I don’t recommend that when it is so rewarding to make your own – not to mention cheaper; I’ve seen $60 32 oz.bottles of the (real) stuff on e-Bay.

The origins of cyser are traced back to the prime days of mead, about 8000 years ago. This was the original apple cider. Thousands of years later, Druids popularized the apple in Europe and the apple brewing Renaissance began, resulting in variety after variety of cider – the main alcoholic beverage of the people until the late 1800’s. Apple orchards actually paid part of their wages in pints of apple cider to their workers. Cyser is beyond apple cider though, and worth the extra effort, I think. Brewing cyser is a reenactment of an ancient tradition.

photo credit: Marco Hamersma

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