Results from juice, yeast and sugar experiments

Are you boiling the sugar in water first or just dumping it in? And for the gallon batches about how much dry yeast are you pitching per gallon?

Also what size stopper do the gallons take? You twisted my are so I am off to the store to get some different yeast for my experiment!

And lastly since my cider is cold I assume I should let it warm up to room temp to pitch the yeast?


Thanks

Ryan

I just dump the sugar in and shake it up for gallons. Carboys I roll on the floor.

For gallons, I pitch anywhere from 1/5 to the whole packet, depending on how many experiments I am doing with the same yeast.

The plastic gallons work best with a 6 1/2 but anything from 6 to 7 will work.

I warm up my cider to room temp before pitching the yeast.

So what yeasts are you gonna try?

04,05,23 nottingham and Windsor. Got them tonight and will pitch Friday night. Now I got to decide what (honey or sugar) to add to what yeast! This should be fun!

Sounds good - FWIW, with the juice I use, Notty and S04 go good with pretty much anything - sugar, honey or no sugar. US05 is great with sugar, not as good with no sugar or with honey. So far I've only tried S23 with sugar. That one is tough to crash because being a lager it is perfectly happy in the fridge (though it clears nicely), but since it bottom ferments, an extra rack after the crash usually gets it. Windsor did best for me with no sugar. Its all dependent on the juice tho, so YMMV. Good luck!

Thanks for the prompt response Kevin!

I've got my first batch brewing right now. Me and my buddies pressed 6 gallons of apple juice and bought some juice to add to it, which is all now fermenting in my basement with some S-04. This is my first time fermenting anything, and its very exciting to watch. I'm going to follow your advice and split it into a couple batches and try different methods. Unfortunately I won't be back home for the first 4 days of fermentation, so I hope that by the time I get back it won't be completely dry (from what I understand, this takes around two weeks).

One thing I'm wondering- since I'm going to split my carboy into a couple different batches, will it be okay to leave just 3 gallons sitting in a 6.5 gal carboy for an extended period of time? My guess is no, because too much air will be left.

Any suggestions on what kind of containers I should use to split my 6 gallons into 3, 2, and 1-gallon portions? How should I do this in order to minimize exposure to air? I do already have a whole bunch of bottles between 22 oz - 750 ml, but those seem a tad small, not to mention a pain to install airlocks on.

Thanks!

You're right that you dont want to leave a lot of headspace if you can avoid it. Sometimes it cant be helped, but if you've got a carboy that's full, you should probably leave it that way until you can split it into jugs without a lot of headspace, like two 3 gallon carboys or single gallons. Gallon jugs work great for experimental batches. The plastic jugs that are used for milk and cider cost about $0.25 in bulk, but the trick is finding someone who will sell you some unused ones. Worst case, you could buy a gallon of water for a buck or maybe cheaper and use the container. Glass gallon jugs are nice because they are reusable, but its hard to find them at a decent price. You might be able to ask around at some restaurants if you are low on funds.

If you split it, shake it up first so that the yeast cake is evenly distributed in the new jugs. Since you've already got it in a carboy and fermenting, you may want to consider just keeping this one as a 6 gal batch and experiment with some other. Its still fairly early in the season, so you have plenty of time.

The fermentation time depends on temps, if your basement is fairly cool, two weeks sounds about right. For the batch got on 9/14, it was about 70F in my basement and some of those were done in 6 days. Later in the season, basement temps get down to 55-65 and the ferments take about a month. Generally the cooler you can keep it the better.

Use a racking cane to transfer the cider from one container to the next. That will minimize air exposure. If you've got a source of apples and expect to be doing this for a while, you probably will want to invest in an autosiphon sooner or later. Maybe start looking on craigslist for some secondhand kegs

Ok so the juice is out and hopefully it will be at room temp when I get home in a few. My game plan is as follows:

23/with sugar
04/honey
Nottingham/brown sugar
Windsor/nothing
05 sugar/brown sugar mix

keeping them all between 1.060 and 1.065

I am excited!

Nice - do you know what kind of apples are in your juice?

I feel like the sticky is a good place to go ahead and post this, I don't know if any of you have heard but I was browsing he forums and found that a lot of nottingham yeast has been recalled. I know that this is or at least was one of cvillekevin's favorite yeasts and I have recently done a batch of cider with it. I did not get one of the recalled packets but some of you may have. more information here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/nottingham-yeast-recall-135065/

Thanks for the heads up. I used Nottingham for one of the carboys that I got last Thursday. It was from a different batch though. It was a little slower than the S04 to start, but it seems to be doing fine now

Got them all going. As for the apples I don’t know what the mix is. Finding a apple orchard around Chicago is not easy these days. All the ones we went to as kids are gone. Or the barn and store is still there but the orchard was sold and is now houses. So the cider I got was made in Michigan and sold at the Goebberts Farm. I did find a orchard that presses their apples in house but its a 3 hour round trip! I did call and ask if they do bulk discounts and they said yes but not until the end of the season so I am going to call them in mid November and if they will give me a deal I will make the trip with all my empty carboys!

But anyways here is what I did. And yes I know about the Nottingham recall and my local shop pulled that a few weeks ago and I got a fresh pack. The juice itself had a gravity of 1.042 and I tried to get these all in the 1.060-1.065 ball park.

s-04 just honey
Nottingham / pure maple syrup
s-23 Sugar corn/cane
s-05 Brown sugar/corn sugar mix 70/30
Windsor nothing just juice

All are silent but the S-04 that one filled the air lock 3X and is going strong. All fermenting at 68 degrees.

Sounds good! I've got a S04 batch with honey that I just started and I had to use a blow off tube. First time I've ever needed to do that with S04. Fermentis must have put out a real healthy batch of the S04.

I drive about 2 1/2 hours round trip to get to Showalters orchard. Its worth it though. There are closer orchards, but none that can match the quality/price ratio.

When I was at the orchard last week, I asked them about nitrogen fertilizers. It turns out that they dont use any nitrogen once the trees start producing, because the apple quality isnt as good. I was really impressed to hear that because that is the same thing that Jim Koan (JK Scrumpy) says, and a lot of European cider makers dont use nitrogen either. A lot of the big US commercial orchards use nitrogen to pump up their juice yields. Its good to know that there are still some producers who care more about quality and even better that there is one within driving distance.

Here is some preliminary info on the test batches that were made with six wheat yeasts and one pilsner yeast.

All of the batches were made with juice that was 50% Staymans, 25% York and 25% Empire, pressed on 10/8/09. Starting sg 1.054, pH 3.9, no k-meta:

The 1010, 3056 and 2001 smack packs took forever (about 6 hours) to puff up at room temperature. Supposedly, that is somewhat normal, but the 3068 and 4184 smack packs are ready much faster. The 3942, 3333 and 3638 packs puffed up in the usual 2-3 hours

Temps in my basement were 60-68 throughout the fermentation.

All of the batches, except for the White Labs 380, had started fermentation withing 24 hours, with airlock activity within 36 hours – a little slower than most of the dry yeasts I use. The WLP380 took 48 hours to start fermenting, with airlock activity at about 60 hours. All of the batches, except for the 3942, pushed some foam up into the airlocks. For the 1010 and 380 batches there was so much foam that I replaced the airlocks with blowoff tubes on those.

I checked out the seven batches with no sugar last night, five days after pitching the yeast:

WY1010 – 1.034, very smooth, SWMBO likes more than 3068
WY3056 – 1.026, also very nice and smooth, SWMBO likes more than 3068
WY3333 – 1.010, has a sour apple taste and a little yeasty, SWMBO didn’t like it at all. Cold crashed
(at this point SWMBO had enough of the tasting, so following impressions are my own)
WY3638 – 1.028, tastes very similar to 3068, but without as much of a sour note
WY3942 – 1.010, a little sour and yeasty, will probably be OK when yeast drops out. Cold crashed
WY2001 – 1.012, a little stinky, decent apple finish. Cold crashed
WLP380 – 1.030, nice and smooth with a mango taste.

So three are crashed and the others I’m planning to let go till about 1.020 or so and see how they taste. The wheat yeasts are nice for a sweet cider because they can be sweet without being sticky sweet tasting. The ale yeasts that I use would be very sticky sweet at sgs of 1.026 – 1.034, but with the wheat yeasts, its quite tolerable

At this point, the batches that I crashed, I probably wouldn’t use again, even if they end up tasting great, because they fermented out so fast. One of the nice things about the 3068 batches is that they take a little longer than the ale yeasts to ferment out, so I can take my time crashing them. It seems that several of the other wheat yeasts have this same property

mZnthebend said:

CvilleKevin

Thank you very much for your timely response and depth of information. I'm sure looking forward to trying something new. I think in light of pitching into the Sankey and only doing a single batch at the moment I will rehydrate the yeast in some boiled (Cooled to 100F) water before pitching.

Thanks again.

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Thanks AGAIN CvilleKevin!

I have been tasting my first Cider over the last few days and have been extremely impressed with it. 10 gallons with 1 gallon of boiled water and 4# light brown sugar. O.G. 1.071 ( I little higher than I wanted, but heh!) 15 Gallon Sankey with CO2 purged headspace and three packs of Nottingham rehydrated and fermented around 68F. It took a little longer to ferment than I expected, but I stopped it at 1.010 since the OG was so high. Kegged and crashed and have been serving from the keg that I crashed. I understand I'll be getting a little sediment, but I'm a little limited with Keg or fridge space right now. I'm very impressed and am looking forward to making more in the future.

Quick question, do you or have you ever serve from a keg that you crashed in?

Thanks again for the wealth of information.

I always crash in carboys and dont move to kegs until its clear. You could probably crash in kegs as long as you keep it cold, because the yeast will still be there at the bottom of the keg

Well 5 days later and we have issues. All only went down .004 points or so! What the hell!

What kind of temps do you have? 0.004 in five days would not be unusual if your temps are 55-60. My last batches of the season in December/January go that slow and they are usually the best batches.

They were at 66 degrees. I pitched some more yeast and gave them a shake and raised the temp to 71 last night . Will the juice still be good? I just don't understand how even the one with just juice and yeast went from 1.042 to 1.038 in 5 days with activity.

That does seem like a slow ferment for 66 degrees. Did you let your yeast rehydrate slowly? Check out bottom of page 15. Best practice would be to use a starter. I skip this step to save time, but you still have to be careful with the pitch. I usually pitch in my kitchen, which is a warm room, so it is about 70, then move the jugs to the basement about an hour later.

The juice should still be fine. I've had natural ferments take up to a week to get started. Next time you take a sg reading, you could take a taste just to make sure. You should be seeing pretty good activity on all of these if you pitched more yeast last night. When they get going fairly strong, you can drop the temps again.

When you said that the one with S04 filled the airlock three times, do you mean that it pushed foam up into the airlock? Did that batch also drop only 0.004? Once an S04 ferment gets going, it likes nice low temps, so that would be strange. I would expect something like 4-8 points a day for several days once it gets to the point of foaming the airlock. Did it ever get real cold in the past 4 days?

I just cold crashed the first batch from the Oct 8th pressing. Temps have been nice and cool - around 60-65 for the past 10 days.



From left to right, status of keg batches is as follows:

Two batches from the 9/14 pressing which are clearing in secondaries,

Wild yeast batch – This one started fermenting hard, so I moved it to the back porch several days ago. Now its fermenting slow and steady at about 45F. Havent checked sg yet

Wildflower Honey, S04 yeast. 1.024 still too sweet, honey/apple balance is good.

Turbinado/Dextrose, US05 yeast. 1.020, has nice sweet/sour taste. This would be good with raspberries, which I’m planning to add before crash, so I can get rid of the raspberry pulp at the same time as the crash

S04 yeast, no sugar, crashed at 1.010, could have maybe gone a little earlier, like 1.012 or 1.014. Has good apple taste and a sour dry finish. Since none of the others will need to stop for a while, I’ll give this a full 48 hours in the fridge.

Turbinado/Dextrose, Nottingham yeast. 1.030 , very smooth but too early to say how its going to go

No sugar, 3068 yeast. Still only at 1.040. Tastes good. I’m pretty sure that it’s the wild yeast that gives the 3068 a signature sour taste – probably because the 3068 takes so long to get going, so the wild yeast has more expression before the 3068 takes over

The two carboys on the right in the foreground are from a cider pressing party last weekend. The apples, in order of quantity in the mix are Cameo, McIntosh, Fuji, Gala, Jonathan, Grimes Golden, Winesap, Granny Smith, sg is 1.052, ph was 4.1 which is surprisingly high, because the finish is tart on this mix. The carboy in the foreground has no sugar and S04 yeast. Its at 1.018 and tastes a little sour. The one next to it is another wild yeast ferment, which so far has been nicely slow and steady havent checked the sg yet.

I’m really happy with the wheat yeast test batches. It’s a little early to say for sure, but I think several of these are going to be as good or better than the 3068 for a sweet style. The 2001 pilsner doesn’t really work for a sweet cider, but its really good in its own right – more of an apple beery sort of taste. Probably would work well for a graff style, although it did put out a little more of a stink than the others. The only one that I’m not crazy about is the 3942, which was a little too sour and not much apple taste compared to the rest.

One of the challenges of stopping the cider with some residual apple sweetness is knowing when to start checking the SG.

On this last batch, I tried out a new method – using some brew balls to monitor the progress. There is a company that makes these for beer, and they were good enough to make me a custom set for cider. So far, they seem pretty useful for cider and I’ll probably be getting some more of these for the next round of batches. Here’s the website: http://www.brewballstore.com/



The basic idea is that each of the balls drops at a certain SG, so you can tell how your ferment is progressing without repeatedly opening your carboy to take SG samples. I’m not certain how useful this is for beer, but for cider it is really handy, because you can minimize the number of times that you need to take hydro samples to determine the optimal point to crash.

Say you are planning to crash around 1.010, and want to check the taste around 1.015 to make sure the sugar/acid balance is about right – you can just sanitize the 1.010 and 1.015 balls, put them in the primary when you pitch the yeast and then don’t worry about taking hydro samples until the 1.015 ball drops.

For this round of batches, I expected the S04 batch with no sugar to be ready to crash first. I figured I’d crash around 1.008 and I put four balls in the primary to measure the progress: 1.020, 1.012, 1.010 and 1.008.

The 1.020 ball dropped on Thursday, seven days after the pitch, so that gave me a sense of how fast the ferment was moving and about when I would need to plan on crashing. Normally, I wouldn’t take a hydro sample at this point but I did just to double check the accuracy – it was spot on. The 1.012 ball dropped yesterday and I tasted again. The finish was a little more sour than I expected so I decided to crash at 1.010 instead of 1.008, which I did today. So I only took two samples prior to the crash and really only needed to take one.

I put the 1.025 and 1.015 balls in the natural fermenting batch so I could monitor that one as well. The 1.025 ball hasn’t dropped yet, which is a good sign for a natural ferment, so I havent taken any samples yet. When the 1.025 ball drops, I’ll take a reading and decide if I still should let it go to 1.015, or I might toss the 1.020 or 1.012 balls in, based on the taste of the sample at 1.025. If all goes well, I should only need to take one or two hydro samples from the natural yeast batch to nail the optimal crash point.

These things arent quite the perfect solution – they don’t yet have a stock set for common cider values, and I’d rather have numbers for the SGs, rather than colors that I have to remember. Also, if the cider kicks up some krausen and gunks up the top of the carboy, it can be tough to see the balls. But they can definitely reduce the number of times you need to take hydro samples in order to nail a good crash point, which means less cleaning and less air getting to the cider. I’m hoping these folks will continue to improve them for cider use.

Wheat yeast test batches are on the left hand side. The ones on the right are four of the six that I saved from the DME batches. The other nine gallons from the DME test batches I gave away for making vinegar, which should come out great using the malted cider as a base.



The DME wasn’t really what I was looking for in a cider, but its pretty good in its own right. Its more like a slightly weak bodied brown ale with an apple finish. I could see a keg of this being pretty popular at a party. If I had used a little more than 6oz of DME per gallon and less tart apples, I think it would have been better.

I saved the light malt and wheat malt with 3068 yeast, dark malt and light malt with US05, dark malt with nottingham and light malt with S04. Of these, I prefer the US05 batches. These were all decent tasting and fairly distinctive. The other nine batches were all pretty much lesser imitations of these six. It will be interesting to see what other folks think of them at the next couple of tastings.

CvilleKevin said:

That does seem like a slow ferment for 66 degrees. Did you let your yeast rehydrate slowly? Check out bottom of page 15. Best practice would be to use a starter. I skip this step to save time, but you still have to be careful with the pitch. I usually pitch in my kitchen, which is a warm room, so it is about 70, then move the jugs to the basement about an hour later.

The juice should still be fine. I've had natural ferments take up to a week to get started. Next time you take a sg reading, you could take a taste just to make sure. You should be seeing pretty good activity on all of these if you pitched more yeast last night. When they get going fairly strong, you can drop the temps again.

When you said that the one with S04 filled the airlock three times, do you mean that it pushed foam up into the airlock? Did that batch also drop only 0.004? Once an S04 ferment gets going, it likes nice low temps, so that would be strange. I would expect something like 4-8 points a day for several days once it gets to the point of foaming the airlock. Did it ever get real cold in the past 4 days?

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I think I pitched too cold and no I did not rehydrate the yeast I just dumped it in and let it sit for a few minutes and then shook it. I have a feeling that the juice was still too cold coming from the fridge a few hours earlier and the yeast never had a chance to get going. However now that I pitched more and raised the temp all are bubbling. I haven’t had a chance to check the gravity this weekend but I will tonight and hopefully it will be lower! Before I turned on the room heater the lowest it got was about 64. My basement is 3/4 below grade so the temp stays pretty constant all year.

CvilleKevin, are those 750ml flip-tops, or 1L?

Where is your source?

They are one liter source is: http://www.ebottles.com/showbottles.asp?familyid=1314

CvilleKevin said:

They are one liter source is: http://www.ebottles.com/showbottles.asp?familyid=1314

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Awesome. Thanks!

love the brew balls. I'd be the company is pretty much willing to make any density ball you ask, might have to check into this myself. . . I can see how these are cool to fool around with and are a lot easier but, for example, exactly how many sets would you need kevin? That is one spot the hydrometer has them beat, you only need one at any given time. I also love those bottles. What is your experience with them holding carbonation?

Yes, they will make custom densities on request.

How many sets I would need is a good question. Probably not too many. You can actually tell a lot with just one ball.

Its hard to predict the best sg to crash a given batch, because it is dependent on acid balance, the yeast profile, etc which is a little different each time. But you generally know about when you want to start checking. For example, I generally crash an S04 batch at 1.010 or lower, so there is no point in checking the SG until I get to 1.012 or so. Having the 1.020 ball is nice for measuring the time between 1.020 and 1.012 and thus predicting the time to get to a given final SG, but it would be possible to get away without it because S04 is fairly predictable. I've currently got one set that I am using to monitor two batches. I probably could have monitored three batches at a time with a more judicious set of balls, and I will reuse the ones that I took out of the batch I crashed yesterday.

These definately dont replace the hydrometer, but if they can cut the hydrometer use in half, and I can get away with 1-3 balls to monitor each batch, they will be worth it. It will still take some experimenting to figure out the best values and it would be a lot easier if they had numbers when managing 8 batches at once.

The bottles hold carb fine, although out of the box they are not quite as tight as a grolsh and after a few years of use, some of the swing tops lose their tightness. Every now and then you'll have to take one of the swing tops off and bend it with a pair of pliers and then it will be good for several more seasons. If you take these on a plane, definitely make sure all the tops are tight and bend any that feel even a little bit loose.

Check again and dead! Another .002 drop and stop. Then I read the fine print on the label and they have two preservatives listed! So I assume that is the issue and this juice will not work. Real bummer man $40 down the hole. I guess my only option would be to drive all to the fresh pressed orchard.

@thatguy--Before I threw away $40 worth of juice I think I'd make up a healthy starter with an aggressive yeast, get my temp just right and re-pitch. A little bit of time & money for some more yeast and a chance at rescuing the batch versus tossing the whole thing seems like worth a try. Most preservatives in AJ aren't poisons, just growth inhibitors. If you can get your yeast all worked up into a feeding frenzy you might be able to plow on through.

jcobbs said:

@thatguy--Before I threw away $40 worth of juice I think I'd make up a healthy starter with an aggressive yeast, get my temp just right and re-pitch. A little bit of time & money for some more yeast and a chance at rescuing the batch versus tossing the whole thing seems like worth a try. Most preservatives in AJ aren't poisons, just growth inhibitors. If you can get your yeast all worked up into a feeding frenzy you might be able to plow on through.

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You know I just got 4 more kegs in yesterday and I was thinking about moving all of the juice out of the 1 gallon jugs into a keg and pitching a butt load of yeast last night but I just drank my sorrows away! At this point I am ready to try anything. The samples still taste fine to me so its worth a shot. I also have three beers that are ready to rack I wonder if I should just pull some yeast from them and pitch. So pitch more and more yeast to the 1 gallon jugs. Or mix all the juice together and pitch all of the 5 different yeast mixed together. Or ix all the juice and get one kind of yeast and pitch again. And the final option would be to pull the yeast cake off a beer and pitch that!. So many options!

I've been able to get juice with preservatives to ferment out on several occasions, but it never tasted very good. Probably because since the yeast were not reproducing, the ones that were left at the end of the ferment were old and probably demented as well

I'd go ahead and mix all the juice together because at this point you are no longer trying to find the optimal recipe for your juice - just trying to salvage the juice - and it will be easier to manage in one carboy.

Since you have beers that are ready to rack, I would definitely use those cakes, unless you were planning to use them for something else. They will be strong and healthy. Rack one one of those beers into the keg now, pour the ciders into that carboy and use the yeast cake to give your cider a kick. When that batch starts to die off, rack the next beer and add that cake to the cider. If you need to, you can do the same with the third keg. You will probably want to stop the cider fermentation on the sweet side to mask any weird flavors that you might pick up from the preservatives, but hopefully you can end up with something that is drinkable

Here is a link for some orchards in your state. Hopefully you can find one that is closer and get some good juice for your next batch
http://www.allaboutapples.com/orchard/il.htm

If I've lost too much of the apple flavor during fermenting can I add some sweet cider to the carboy after racking and let is age for a while? Will it keep alright when bottled?

Thanks!

phawley said:

If I've lost too much of the apple flavor during fermenting can I add some sweet cider to the carboy after racking and let is age for a while? Will it keep alright when bottled?

Thanks!

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If you can find a way to stop the wild yeast in the sweet cider from fermenting then that will make it sweeter for sure. I know k sorbate is one way to kill off wild yeast/bacteria.

Sorbate is effective, but it leaves a very discernible taste. Some people are OK with the taste. Most not. I'm not crazy about it. Also you must use k-meta before the sorbate or it will really taste bad.

Cold crashing can be used remove the yeast if you use an ale or wheat yeast. Search on cold crash, or read the whole sticky for more info on cold crashing.

You can backsweeten with sweet cider or concentrate, sugar, agave, etc. In my experience, the best sweetener to use depends on how your batch turned out. Pour some 4oz glasses and experiment to find out what is the best sweetener for the batch you have. However - you must either remove the yeast with cold crashing or stop it with k-meta/sorbate or else your cider will not be stable

The key to getting really good cider is not to let all of the natural apple sugar ferment out in the first place. Backsweetening is OK to salvage a failed batch so that it is drinkable, but it wont be as good as if you had stopped the cider when it still has the natural apple sugar

For the first batch I used Coopers - not sure what kind of yeast that is.

Sweet cider I'm using has run through UV so there is no concern for wild yeast.

Are their any ways to maintain natural apple sweetness and raise the alcohol above 6%? Add extra juice from very sugary apples?

BTW - thanks for your help. Not many people here in Cincinnati are interested in cider - despite our Johnny Appleseed history - and I've had a heck of a time getting my questions answered.

you could always try it and let us know how it turns out. I'll let cvillekevin handle your apple sweetness plus ABV quesion but you can search this very thread and find some info on what type of sugars work well to maintain the apple taste. IMHO people, myself included, worry about ABV way too much. In theory if it tastes good it'll go down faster, resulting in about the same level of drunkness. I guess I'd rather have an outstanding tasting cider at 4% ABV than a so-so tasting cider at 6%. anyone second that?

Thanks, rjschroed! I'm not looking to get stupid quick. I thought I had read somewhere that ciders under about 5.5% or so did not age well. About 6 months or so. I'm hoping to save some for a year from now or so and see how the aging changes the flavor. I've got a batch at about 5% right now and if I'm wrong on the aging thing I'll go ahead and rack it right now because the taste is about where I want it.

Do you happen to know much about the requirements in longer aging?

I'm not sure what you meant by get stupid quick but I wanted to clarify that I wasn't implying that you were stupid. This brewing thing we do requires constant experimentation or else we wouldn't ever find new things or what we like best. Don't know much about aging cider under 5.5% but I think I remember reading somewhere that you were alright for at least 6-9 months.

Some mills sweat the apples to increase the sugar content. You can also freeze concentrate before you ferment it.

Higher ABV cider does seem to keep a little better in my experience, but thats not really an issue until late next spring. 4 percent will keep fine til then.

The easiest way to bump the ABV and not affect the apple taste is to use a small bit of sugar. I've found that a mix of 2/3 turbinado to 1/3 dextros is the closest to the original apple sugar taste. You will lose a bit the apple taste, but as long as you dont use more than a couple pounds of sugar in 6 gallons and dont go over 1.070 regardless (if you are starting with sweet apples, cut back on the sugar) it will be hard to notice unless you have two batches side by side.

I'm pretty sure that if you dont add real heavy sugars, the yeast will go to work on the added stuff and not go after the longer chain apple sugars until the very end of the ferment. The season still has a ways to go so you could do one with just the apple sugar now to drink on and then make another one with the sg bumped up a little bit for keeping.