Keith66 said:Sweeten and carb. I make 5 gallon batches and sweeten with 3-5 cans of frozen apple juice concentrate (and sometimes caramel syrup) then stove-top pasteurize. For 1 gallon, I'd use between a half and whole can of fajc, but browse Pappers' stove-top pasteurizing thread first. There are other options, like the non-fermentables you mentioned.
Keith66 said:Sorry, no, I sweeten then bottle on the same day, then allow it to carb in the bottles for a few days, then pasteurize to kill the yeast and stop fermentation. Pasteurizing involves putting the pressurized bottles into 190° water which can have obvious risks. Nonfermentable sweeteners avoid this risk.
Hi, I've decided to go with semi-sweet. If I bottle at 1.008, wait until carbed and than pop in the dishwasher, will this get me close?
Thanks Keith, would you call Magners semi sweet. That is what i am aiming for.
I picked up the apple juice fresh from the orchard today. tastes nice but it's very dark.
Some people use the dishwasher and can get away with it, I just don't trust that the dishwasher will do the job, specially if you want to bottle age/condition. My cider with 2 months in the bottle taste 10 times better than they did younger.
I've used the dishwasher to pasteurise on many brews and strongly advocate this method. I recommend using the longest hottest setting you have, usually Intensive or something like that.
I have stopped a brew (Upstate Mike Caramel Apple Hard Cider) at 1014 and backsweetened as per the recipe - the dishwasher stopped that. The flavour still improved in the bottle as time went on.
Keith66 said:Freisste, let me direct you to a couple good threads.
Upstatemike started a thread called Caramel Apple Hard Cider, which starts with a specific recipe, but has tons of general apple cider information. Like most long threads it gets repetitive, so no need to read all 105 pages.
Another great thread is Easy Stove-Top Pasteurizing With Pics by Pappers. It too has lots of good info, and no need to read all 82 pages.
I've made a handful of apple and other ciders based largely on the info in these two threads. If you have any other questions I'll do my best to answer them.