Home Brewing

From left to right: Pyment, probably pyment, cyser, blackberry cyser, elderberry cyser, mead.

Summer brings an abundance of garden apples, which in Autumn are joined by grapes, and an urge to make good use of them. Fermenting grape juice with honey makes pyment, and fermenting apple juice with honey makes cyser. And this year I succumbed again to the compulsion to make home brew.

The photo above shows 2023’s demi johns, minus the batch of metheglin that already got poured down the sink. I racked them today to remove sediments, and took the opportunity to taste each one. It went something like this: sour, sour, sour, sour, sour, sour. They look a lot nicer than they taste. The best is the blackberry cyser - glowing jewel red - which still has some sweetness, but this is probably just because it is not yet fully fermented.

Sigh. Perhaps they will improve over time. I’ve returned them to the cold and dark to mature. But I suspect I simply don’t like the kind of drink that these fermentations produce. I only like the idea of them.