First Cyser

I have loved honey every since I was a little kid. When I started home brewing I began looking at ways to incorporate it into my recipes. I was familiar with mead already, in fact I have 5 gallons in my basement that are aging right now, but I wanted something that didn't take a year to make.  I decided to make a cyser with some ingredients I could pick up at the grocery store. Here is the recipe I am using. I didn't do a lot of research, but instead aimed for a target original gravity using just apple cider and honey.I also looked The Big Cider Making Post on Reddit for some basic guidelines.

Recipe

• 4.5 gallons apple cider 
• 4 pounds of clover honey
• yeast nutrient
• pectic enzyme
• 4 cups of fresh raspberries
• Lalvin D47 yeast

OG- 1.080

First I cleaned and sanitized everything. I put roughly half of a gallon of the cider in a stock pot and warmed it to 90 degrees. I then added the honey, yeast nutrient, and pectic enzyme. I used this to simply mix the honey in well. I then added everything to the carboy and took a gravity reading. I was right where I wanted to be. I shook the carboy for 5 minutes to aerate and pitched the re hydrated yeast. I also set up a blow-off tube. I recently learned why a blow-off tube is important. I hope to never repeat that mistake. I am actually a little nervous with the amount of head space I have in the carboy right now. I put this in my basement where I expect it to ferment in the mid 60s.

I hope this goes well. I really enjoy cider and hope I cant get some of my friends who are not big beer drinkers to try something new.