Thoughts on a cherry cyser recipe

I'm going to be attempting my first cyser this week, and was looking for some input. Here is what I have in mind for a 3 gal batch-

-2 gals fresh pressed cider
-6lbs orange blossom honey
-(2) 12oz cans apple concentrate
-32oz bottle of cherry juice
-packet of D47 or safale S-04

My concern is that 6lbs of honey for three gallons will be too sweet, especially with S-04. I want it to be on the sweet side, just not overwhelming. I don't really care how strong it is, just looking for a good taste. I have also been thinking of kicking it up to 5 gallons by adding another gallon of cider, 32oz bottle of cherry juice, and topping with water.

Please let me know what you think.

Thanks,
wickerman

I think that is a lot of fermentables for a 3 gallon batch. I tried to crunch the numbers but without exact brands and nutrition data it is tough. Just googling around the most common 32oz cherry juice bottle is concentrated tart cherry juice. I used a generic brand of that as a base for calculations and just some treetop apple concentrate for the 12oz cans and went off the sugar content of fresh apples for estimating the cider. I came up with an estimate OG of 1.164. Taken dry is over 20% ABV. S-04 is a medium alcohol tolerance beer yeast with an attentuation on the lower side of beer yeasts. I think it will poop out way to soon for this brew. But if you top off these ingrediants with water to 5 gallons then your estimated gravity is 1.098. In a much better posistion for your yeast with possibly a little sweetnes left behind.

I think the recipe sounds great but just change the size to 5 gallons and top off these ingrediants with water.

Sounds good but a bit high gravity for ale yeast.
I have something like this cold crashing at the moment with 5 lb honey and 4 gallons of juice. It gave me a potential of something like 11% ABV (1.082 OG, to be stopped sweet). I used Safale-05.

I agree with the above--except perhaps the adding of water. Use more juice if you can get it, or maybe just lessen the honey and go with your original 3 gallon batch. Another thing if you read the cherry cider thread over in the cider forum, they discuss some of the difficulties of getting a good cherry flavour in the finished product--so maybe save the cherry juice and backsweeten with it in secondary, or add later in primary?

Thanks for the replies. Pretty much what I was thinking after I started to put thought into it. I'll have an extra gallon of cider I can use, but I'll have to find out if I can get more. I guess I'll go with D47, and maybe wait to add the cherry juice to the secondary. Is a gallon of water too much to add? I figure if I have 3 gals cider, 1/2 gal honey, and 24oz concentrate that leaves a little less than 1.5 gallons to make 5. If I leave a 1/2 gal of space for the cherry juice , that means I'll have around a gallon that I need to fill. Also, how long should I wait to rack/add cherry juice?

Thanks,
wickerman