Something I have never done before. Need advice

In the past 2 years, I have been making cider that I always ferment to complete dryness and I back sweeten with Xylitol or Splenda. I can't stand that artificial taste anymore so I want to make a sweet cider and If I decide I want it carbed, I will by a keg system as I will never use the Papers easy pasteurizing method again ... this **** is dangeeeeeerous !

My question is when do you recommend I stop fermentation using potassium sorbate and campden tablets if I want a sweet cider "a la" Honeybees or Strongbow(1.014+-?) and what are the procedure?

If my plan is to have a quite high initial gravity to end up with a sweet 10% cider(wine) and I will wait for it to clear before I bottle. Once bottled, how long do you think I will have to wait before I can drink them as with my completely dry cider, I feel the taste is not good until they have aged for one year but since this cider will not be bone dry, I wonder it it would be sooner ? ... the 10% ABV might play against me here ?

thanks,

Naeco

It's pretty difficult to stop an active fermentation. If I was to stop one I would:

1. Rack onto sorbate/campden in new vessel, careful not to siphon any of the yeast cake (despite all the yeast in suspension). This will remove quite a lot of nitrogen which is needed for healthy yeast. (Look up a process called 'keeving')
2. Cold crash after you feel the campden and sorbate has had time to evenly distribute throughout the brew.

I've never done it before so I can't help much more than that, I'm sure there's someone else in here that can throw in their two cents. Also if you plan on stopping the fermentation before the yeast finishes, you should be aware that the yeast actually do some 'cleaning up', removing some by-products which can cause harshness/off tastes. At 10% I would treat it similar to wine (apfelwein is around the same ABV from memory) and wait up to a year to drink, but taste is subjective.

Good luck with it. Just a question, why not ferment dry and stabilise then add normal sugar/honey?

Use an ale yeast and cold crash. You dont need chemicals. I've got a couple kegs on tap from apples that were pressed 16 days ago and they taste great. Start with Notty, S04 or Brupaks if you can find it. They are all relatively easy to crash. I would not advise going to 10%. IMHO once you bump the sg past about 1.065 or 1.070, you start washing out the apple taste.

So you recommend I ferment to complete dryness again, rack then cold crash and back sweeten with apple juice? and bottle ?

I would have loved to keep some residual of the initial cider and that's why I wanted to stop fermentation early ? Their must be a way other that the easy stove top thing ? what about ...

stop fermentation at 1.010 and rack to fresh carboy, bottle and put in dishwasher at the heavy cycle to kill all the yeast ?

That's what I recommend, yes. The only difference is that you have fermented dry and stabilised with sorbate/sulfite. I don't see what difference there would make taste-wise if you store some of the cider in the fridge until you use it to backsweeten.

To be honest, stove-top pasteurising is about as easy as you're going to get it without compromising the quality of your results. Putting it in a dishwasher may not heat all the bottles to the same temperature, may be too rough on the bottles etc. I for one would hate to be picking out bits of broken glass from my dishwasher.

I had a ceramic miso soup spoon shatter in my dishwasher once... not since Mrs. Byam's chemistry class has there been a more tedious hour of work.

Do you think it is possible to pasteurize a all bunch of bottle in a bath with only using hot water and leaving them there for something like an hour ?

Doubtful. If you want a still cider there's no danger in stove-top pasteurising because you will be heating the bottles straight away with very little dissolved CO2 (comparatively).