Hopped Cider Experiment Advice

Ever since a lot of my friends have jumped onto the gluten-free train I've been thinking about a recipe idea for a hopped cider that is more beer-like.

My general idea is to make 2.5 gallons of dry cider, hopefully around 12% ABV and then to make 2.5 gallons of what I am calling a 'hop tea' that I'll add to the cider to bring it to 5 gallons of hoppy cider at 6% ABV.

A quick recipe search has shown me this similar to a graff (Which I'd never heard of before) but without the malt extracts etc. I'd like to have a thicker mouthfeel than normal hard cider and so my questions are:

1) What yeast should I use? With the ciders I've made before at 12% I've used dry wine yeast. Would a beer yeast be better for this?

2) Is the hop tea the way to go? What can I add to thicken the body? Maltodextrin? Raisons?

How exactly does one get a 12% ABV cider? Freeze-distilling? Concentrating the apple juice?

I would think it would be easier to just make a larger batch of, say, 7-8% ABV cider, and make a smaller amount of (more concentrated) hop tea. Or even just make a normal cider and use some isomerized hop extract and dry-hop.

In any case, I don't know if most beer yeasts are going to be well-suited to fermenting a 12% ABV cider. I do know that beer yeasts work fine on normal-strength ciders; IIRC, Rev. Nat's Hallelujah Hopricot--which is a VERY beer-like dry-hopped apple/apricot cider--uses Belgian ale yeast (I assume T-58). Crispin has a few ciders done with various beer yeasts, including one done with a lager yeast which is quite good.

In any case, this is probably a better question for the cider forum, not the GF forum.

I've achieved the the 12%ABV cider by using all apple juice with added sugar and using Red Star Cotes des Blancs dry wine yeast. It gets very dry and is more of a dry apple-wine than what one normally thinks of a cider.

Thanks for the cider forum suggestion. I'm new here and don't know if you can cross-post or if I have to just cut and paste over there?

Achieving 10 - 12% cider is easy with wine yeast. I have also used WYeast Liquid Cider Yeast and made a 5.5 gallon batch that was 10.5%. I dry hopped this with 1.5 oz of cent and 1.5 oz of cascade. Next time I will be upping this to 5 - 6 oz total. Currently I am making a 1G batch and using beer yeast, I'll let you know how that turns out. I will be dry hopping that with 1oz of hops.

Definitely use wine yeast. Ale and lager yeast don't do so well with an overabundance of simple sugars. You could try just dry hopping and adding maltodextrin or lactose for body. I assume you are adding cane sugar to get 12%. You could boil it with some hops as well. I'm just not sure bitter is going to go with tart. Go for it though. Post back in here if you want. I would be interested in the results.

FYI.... Crispin the Saint is amazing! Made with trappist yeast. I made a cider with washed chimay yeast. Came out great.

My ciders have hit in the 8 to 9% range anf ive used nottingham... make a good starter like the package says and it seems to do well... the guys on the cider forum report a less dry cider than with the wine yeast, and less wait time for conditioning... as for the graff/body question, Ive got some tapioca syrup that might be interesting and as mentioned malto or lactose... I would probably just dry hop or only 10min boil...