(Light) Cherry Cyser

This is a sweet, hopefully juicy mead--easy to drink and enjoy, and done fairly quickly (both times, I made it in September, and bottled for New Years).  The "light" in the name refers to the ABV% which is slightly lower than the average mead--around 10%.  Thus far, I have made it twice--with differences in each.

So, here are the recipes and my rather minimal log notes.

2014 Batch.  And I am still mourning this glass.

Apple Blossom Metheglin

I came up with this recipe a couple of years ago--probably after making my Fireweed blossom mead.  Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get to make it last year--I missed when the crab-apple in the yard bloomed. 

I am aiming at a floral mead, off dry--I may actually be able to lightly carbonate this one, which would work well with the style.

Black Lagoon Hydromel

One of the earliest meads I made that turned out good.  The name comes from the colour--after seeing it, we joked it looked like swamp water.  It also got dubbed the colour changing mead, for reasons which will be obvious.
I have also made a honey based (naturally fermented) soda off of this recipe, which was lovely as well.

Black Lagoon Hydromel

12 dried juniper berries

10 fresh bay leaves (cracked)

3 (small) sprigs of fresh rosemary

1.25-1.5 pounds honey

I made a tisane with herbs by boiling for about 10 minutes then letting it steep for about an hour and a quarter.  At the beginning it was a nice, pale green, after steeping it was a beautiful cranberry red, and when I added the honey it turned grey—which is a shame, I would have rather that it stayed red.

A (hopefully) Malliard Botchet

Botchets are, of course, a type a mead made with caramelized honey...and I have never made a straight one before (previous ones were hybrids with a braggot, and a metheglin).  I decided, somewhat on the spur of the moment to make one and step up the flavours a bit...by going through the same process as is believe to produce the Belgian Candi syrup.  I got curious about what would happen if one did so, and being as I cannot find any evidence of someone else doing so, I decided to experiment by myself.

This isn't the first time I've tried to make the syrup--I've done so once before, for a Dubble based graff, and it turned out fairly successful that time.  As near as I can tell, three things are required to do so: