My 1st Cider

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AngryAndy

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So I made my first cider last week. It's still in the primary fermenting away. Here's my recipe and what I plan to do. What do you guys think? Any thoughts?

5 gallons of 100% pure apple juice
1kg of brown sugar
S-04 yeast

I warmed up 2 gallons of apple juice on the stove. I added the sugar until it was dissolved. I poured the warm juice and the remaining 3 gallons of juice into my primary. Pitched S-04 yeast.

After the primary is done. I plan to rack it to a secondary. I'll let it clean up for another week. Then I plan to back sweeten it with a little extra apple juice until it reaches the sweetness I like. Then I'll use 5oz of priming sugar and bottle it all.

After 4 or 5 days I'll pop one open and see what the carbination is like. If its good I'm going to pasteurize the bottles. I will follow the post on this forum for pasteurization. 190F water put a couple bottles in for 10 minutes and repeat the process until all the bottles are done.

Does this sound okay, pretty good?
I'll be bottling in 22oz (650ml) bottles. Will 10 minutes at 190F work or because I'm using larger bottles does the temp/time need to increase?
 
You definitely won't need priming sugar if you back sweeten.

I used essentially the same process and recipe as you and if you add the additional gallon of apple juice directly to your bottling bucket, it will carbonate just fine (I waited 8 days to pasteurize and they're all a little over-carbed for my taste). Also, you don't need to heat to 190° to pasteurize, 170° will be just fine.
 
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