There is a long story involved with this batch. No one had ever liked my cyser much... too much cinnamon, too dry, too acidic, etc. So one day I decided to try a sweet batch. I started with about 10 pounds of honey and 4 gallons of apple cider from a local orchard. As I was filling the fermenter, I realized that I was going to be about a gallon shy of my usual volume... so I hopped in the car and headed over to the local grcoery store to grab another gallon of cider. I ran inside and noticed apple cider on a display rack right inside the door. In big red letters, the label proclaimed '100% Pure'. I grabbed one, paid, ran home, dumped it in the fermenter, and pitched the yeast. Two days later - nothing. I hydrated a fresh packet of yeast and repitched. Two days later, nothing. I made up a yeast slurry... got the yeast good and active. I pitched it, and it worked for almost a day... then - nothing. Suspecting the worst, I went to the garbage and pulled out the empty gallon jug. In little teeny letters at the bottom of the label (underneath the 100% Pure assertion) were the words 'potassium sorbate and sodium benzoate added to preserve freshness'. Well, I realized I had just committed an irreversible sin, but I am never one to throw away $40.00 worth of mead ingredients without a fight. So, I called my partner and related the tale of woe to him, asking his advice. He suggested that I start another yeast slurry and try to build up a good bed of yeast - several tablespoons worth. Meanwhile, get the must back into a bucket and whip it with a large spoon to aerate it and try to vent the preservatives. Then repitch everything in a fresh fermenter. So that's the way it went from then on... every few weeks, I'd siphon the solution into a bucket and aerate it, while building fresh yeast beds in honey, corn sugar, table sugar, anything I could think of. At one point, I was even aerating with an aquarium bubbler. Finally, after two years of fighting this batch of mead, I decided that I would either drink it as is or spike it with vodka. Well, after all the honey and sugar from the yeast starters, and after beating it senseless every few weeks, apparently it had fermented some... but it was so thick and syrupy you could have used it on pancakes. To top it all off, adding the yeast slurries had raised my volume to over 6 gallons (nearly 7.) I bottled it in one-gallon jugs and decided to take it camping. At least around a campfire, no one complains about the taste of free alcohol. Well... color me shocked when everyone who tried it said it was the best I'd ever made. We went through 3 gallons in one night, and the remainder was bottled in 5th bottles as gifts. Everyone asked me when I was going to make more. I have since spent one batch a year (a 14-gallon batch) trying to reproduce that mistake. This recipe is the latest iteration, and the closest I have come yet to matching the original.

Ingredients for 14 gallons:

--9½ gallons freshly pressed apple cider (NO PRESERVATIVES)
--5 gallons (60 pounds) Missouri wildflower honey
--4 2-inch cinnamon sticks
--¼ tsp. grape tannin --5 tsp. yeast nutrient
--3 packets Lalvin 1118 dry wine yeast

Heat up a quart of apple cider to about 75 degrees. Dissolve the yeast nutrient and grape tannin in the cider. Add the yeast and allow to sit covered for about a day. Boil water in a large stock pot. Submerge the honey containers in the boiling water. This lets the honey inside liquefy a little in order to make it easier to pour. Put 8 gallons of cider into the sterile demi-john. Add the honey. Take the remainder of the cider and heat it up to no higher than 150 degrees. Use the hot cider to rinse out the honey containers and get the last of the honey residue out. Pour the honey residue and remainder of the cider into the demi-john. Drop the cinnamon sticks into the bottom. When the temp is below 80 degrees, pour in the yeast slurry and cap it with an airlock.

Let the cyser ferment in a cool, dark place for 10 to 12 months. At the end of that time, siphon it out of the demi-john into three carboys: 2 5-gallon carboys and a 3-gallon carboy. Leave behind the sediment and the cinnamon sticks. You will have approximately a gallon and a little extra left over. Fill up a gallon jug with the 'bottom of the barrel' and cap it with an irlock. You will use this to top up the three carboys later on. If you have any left after that, drink it.

Let the mead sit for 3 months, then siphon into clean carboys (I clean one new 5-gallon, rack into it, then clean the dirty one to rack the next into, and so on. I found that I need 3 5-gallon and 2 3-gallon carboys in addition to my demi-john to make this work.) Use the leftovers in the gallon jug to top up the carboys. Repeat this process every 3 months until the end of the second year. Bottle it. I usually keg 5 gallons of it, bottle another 5 gallons in gallon jugs, and put the rest in standard wine bottles. I find that if I need more standard wine bottles, I can do them out of one of the gallon jugs.

The finished product will be extremely sweet - so sweet that I have trouble drinking it. However, it has crowd appeal, as I have never had to take any home with me when I bring it to parties and campouts. The cinnamon is a subtle yet tasty counterpoint to the sweetness, and makes it taste a little bit like the spiced apple rings you get at the supermarket. I've found that this is best served with dessert or as an aperitif.