New to Homebrew first time cider attempt

brand new to making my own home brew. Two batches of beer so far, one just in the bottles, and one in the fermenter.

I made a batch of cider yesterday, and here is what I did.

Five gallon carboy.

Five gallons organic unfiltered apple juice.

steeped two pounds of raisins, and two pounds of turbinado sugar at 180 degrees for ten minutes.

used dry champagne yeast from LHBS, they looked really sad, when all i bought was 67 cent pkg. of yeast. They will get more of my money soon enough.

my OG was 1.065.

I suspect that the OG is actually higher, due to the sugars that are still contained inside the raisins.

This morning i woke up, and the fermentation is just flying along, had to change from an airlock to a blow off tube.

You guys think this will turn out okay? any suggestions as to what i might have done differntly, or need to do in the future to this batch of cider?

Thank you.


Tim.

So far, sounds absolutely fine. Cider takes a longer time to age than beer, so don't freak out if this guy isn't ready at the same time as your beer. Also it probably will ferment out dry because of the champagne yeast, but that's no biggie. If you like it dry, then awesome, but if you don't, just make sure the initial ferment is done and you can back sweeten with some apple juice concentrate.

Welcome to the obsession! Current gallon count for me: 26

mike