Cyser: apple mead

Unlike cider, this refreshing drink contains honey.

LA SIDRA.- Apple juice and apple cider are incredibly popular drinks, especially during the fall harvest season.

But despite the fact that apple cider, once the drink of choice for colonial Americans, is experiencing a revival in popularity, apples are largely underrepresented in American alcoholic beverages when compared with beer and wine.

Maybe the reason fermented apple drinks aren’t more widely consumed is because Americans have rarely enjoyed, or even heard of a type of alcoholic apple drink: cyser, or apple mead.

Mead is a type of wine that uses honey as the main source of sugar, while cyser is a particular type of mead made from apples.

Mead is a drink with a long history. Vikings, Gaels, and Celts wrote and told of their love for the drink, attributing magical powers and healing properties to the beverage, which has been brewed on every continent for at least 2,000 years.

In fact, there is a possibility that mead is the oldest fermented, alcoholic beverage in history, outdating even beer.

Though cyser is pretty uncommon in the marketplace, this mead variant made with apple juice and honey is increasingly growing, with ciseries even adding more ingredients like berries, ginger or cinnamon.