Funny words, pt. III

Ah, yes - cyser (see below). Like perry and melomel and pyment, it's one of those arcanely labeled beverages which ought to have a place in every homebrewer's arsenal of seasonal recipes, but generally gets left by the wayside purely on the basis of it's icky name. Most people's first experiences with mead - the artificially sweet, commercially bottled hangover-in-a-bottle you occasionally find in specialty stores - generally puts them off fermented honey drinks for good. And I imagine that other homebrewers out there have shied away from making straight honey mead simply because of the price tag of using that many pounds of high-grade honey (c'mon, when you're used to paying for malted barley, it seems like a heck of a price jump). But as I said before, we've been making cyser for years when the fresh apple crop comes out in autumn, and it's easily one of our hands-down audience favorites.

Some people need proof that cider's even worth drinking, let alone making. Again, feel free to blame it on the jolly rancher preservative tinge of the majority of commercially produced ciders out there. But I dare anyone to spend an afternoon drinking apfelwein in Frankfurt or a bol of Breton cidre in Paris without thinking at least once, gee? could I make this at home?