first cider

I'm going crazy due to some severe impatience...
So I have my first cider bubbling away in the basement, the cider came from the orchard down the street. It went from a crusher straight to my carboy (which they let me fill up).
So its bubbling away using the good ole new hampshire strain of yeast and I dont know what to do with it when I go to bottle.
I can't figure out if I want to carbonate or not. If I do should I use honey or molasses instead of corn sugar? Or do I keep it still?
I really liked the idea of adding in some tea at bottling time to make this more of winter drink (zest of orange, cinnamon, ginger, clove, etc.).
Any ideas?
I feel like I should get about fifty more gallons going that way I can experiment.
So if anyone has any ideas than that would be great. I'm not big into sparkling cider or using champagne yeast, I would rather more of a mulled approach if that tells you where i'm coming from.
Peace!

Why not rack off a gallon to you bottling bucket, add something (or not) & bottle. Then do something different with the next gallon, etc? Certainly it will take longer to do the bottling, but that's one advantage of bottles over kegs; more chances for experimenting. I prefer very lightly carbonated ciders, so I just put them at 5 psi for serving.

If you like mulled cider, there's no reason to not start a second batch, since mulling is done just before drinking.

david_42 said:

Why not rack off a gallon to you bottling bucket, add something (or not) & bottle. Then do something different with the next gallon, etc? Certainly it will take longer to do the bottling, but that's one advantage of bottles over kegs; more chances for experimenting. I prefer very lightly carbonated ciders, so I just put them at 5 psi for serving.

If you like mulled cider, there's no reason to not start a second batch, since mulling is done just before drinking.

Click to expand...

/threadjack

If I carbonate my cider in bottles, will I still be able to mull it? Or will the carbonation mess it up...?

/threadjack