1st batch of cider looking for comments

Literally just got home from buying the stuff. Want some advice. Im going to be making a 5 gal batch. i m looking for advice and comments on the recipe, and the whole process in general.

5 gal apple juice
2.5 lbs of clover honey
1 lb brown sugar
5 cinnamon sticks
2 ozs whole cloves
(was thinking about adding some chamomile whole tea)
1 vial liquid english cider yeast(was going to use nottingham yeast though)

now i guess i am looking for fermenting time and length, advice on sweetness and dryness, advice on carbonating, and anyhting else i can get. I wont be starting this until sunday, and i check this site everyday. so any help i can get would be great.

:rockin:

I would wait until fermentation subsides a bit then add the cinnamon and cloves in a tea bag. Taste every day until you get the flavor you are looking for. I've heard some horror stories with cloves being left too long.

yeah be careful with the cloves. you could also consider cooking them in sugar syrup to extract flavor and adding that to taste, but bear in mind that flavors change a lot during fermentation and certain flavors can really come to the front even if they were hardly noticeable in the fresh juice.

+1 on the spices in a teabag post-primary. I think 1 or 2 cloves & 1 or 2 cinamon sticks will be plenty. Regards, GF.

I read this and go "aw crap..." I put four cinnamon sticks directly into the fermenter. I guess I could always fish them out - it's only been a week...

I like to use the white labs english cider yeast a black tea bag and some lime juice is also nice. I usually let it ferment down to about 1.012 and then put the whole carboy in the fridge to crash the yeast. rack off of the yeast and keg. I find that if i dont let the cider ferment out all of the way, that the cider is much more drinkable while it is young. My favorite thing to do is add some mulling spice to the keg.

so the cider is fermenting. I got the 2.5# of honey and 1# of light brown sugar. i ll do the spices in the secondary ive decided. the OG was 1.076. So this could be a pretty good little cider for my first as long as i can get it down real low. Hopefully i can be real patient

And now i wait.