FOG12

Recipes 

I'm new to brewing and wanted to make a simple semi-sweet sparkling cider with anywhere from 10 to 14% abv. Are there any recipes and tips anyone can give for a first time brewer to achieve this?

dr_al

Recipes 

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f25/man-i-love-apfelwein-14860/

well here is a start, as for making it semi sweet and sparkling do you have a keg setup?

its easier to make it still and sweet or dry and sparkling with less equipment or check out the stove top pasteurizing thread it's stickied at the top besides kegging thats the other method for achieving sweet and carbonated.

i

smegger

Recipes 

As dr_al said, if you have a keg setup, it will be way easier to get the sweetness to a level you prefer and still carbonate.

Otherwise the next easiest way would probably involve some combination of back sweetening, bottle carbing and pasteurisation.

As for recipe, the caramel apple cider recipe (with a few tweaks for alcohol content) sounds pretty nice.

FOG12

Recipes 

I do not have a keg setup, I was going to try to bottle condition and pasteurize the cider, how difficult is this to do?

FOG12

Recipes 

Also I don't mind it slightly dry if that is easier to achieve a sparkling cider

smegger

Recipes 

Dry is super easy. Adding sweetness is a little harder.

Basically you'd sweeten to taste, add priming sugar as needed then pasteurise when its carbed enough.

There is a great thread on pasteurising stickied on this forum. Check it out, pasteurising is probably the most complicated part, but it isn't too bad. You should be able to get an idea on how confident you feel doing it after reading it.

Nogud247

Recipes 

When you are carbing it put some in a plastic bottle so you can tell when to pasteurize it to stop fermentation. Better than bottle bombs.

FOG12

Recipes 

The pasteurization doesn't seem to be too terribly difficult, I was wondering if I made a dry sparkling cider (since that seems to be the easiest) and then pasteurized it to kill the yeast, could I back sweeten after that to get it to semi sweet?

Nogud247

Recipes 

Don't think there'd be much sparkling left after you sweeten it again. You'd need to over sweeten before carb then pasteurize it to stop fermentation at the right carb/sweetness lvl