So I met up with my dad and we backsweetened the cyser last night. I snuck by the house last week to add the potassium metabisulfite and potassium sorbate for stabalizing in preparation for adding the apple juice concentrate. Backsweetening is a much easier task with two people and one of those drill-powered stir sticks compared to doing it alone and rolling the keg around on the floor. Plus I remembered to leave a good bit of headspace in the keg for the sweetener unlike the cider fiasco.
Recipe notes: Gravity dropped from 24.4°Bx (1.103) to 8.8°Bx (0.993) leaving it around 14.1%abv. For sweetening, we brought it back up to 10.2°Bx (not sure what the conversion to SG is here) with two full cans of apple juice, totaling 5 gallons in the keg. This considerably cut the extreme dryness of the drink, but I would still say it’s dry. We also added 2 tablespoons of the clove tincture and 2.5 tablespoons of the cinnamon tincture. All in all, the dry, sweet, spicy, and earthy notes blend quite well for a balanced cyser. We’re all set to bottle on Saturday.
