Fermented out, now what?

I decided to try a little something and clone Brother's Toffee Apple Cider. The main ingredients (palatable at least) are Apple, Pear, Toffee and Cream Soda (Vanilla.) I had a little taste at 1.020, and it's fantastic.

So what I've done so far is fermented a combination of burnt honey (toffee flavor,) apple juice (something like edwort's) and canned pear fruit, blended. I've purposely brewed it stronger than I want it, (nearly 8%) with the intention of adding juice afterwards so it's flavoursome, strong, and quite frankly, I get more from a 1 gallon batch.

So, what do I need to know before I do this? I have an old freezer in my garage that I could cold crash this with if need be. Does the juice that I use have to be 100% or doesn't it matter at this late stage? What's the best way to add this, put it all in a brew bucket, blend and then into secondary/bottles? I need to add Vanilla Extract too.

Furthermore, should I use apple or pear juice, or a combination? I realise this is down to personal taste, but meh, opinions please.

so you are going to add the new juice with the intention of this new sugar not fermenting? in that case cold crashing would be a good start, and then stabilizing is pretty much essential. i think other than that everything is down to personal taste. the juice can be anything after you stabilize. i personally would crash, rack, stabilize with k-meta and sorbate, leave it for a couple weeks under airlock, it will clear more and off flavors from the preservatives will dissipate during this time, then mix up glass by glass until you find a combination you like, mix it all up in the bottling bucket, bottle it, and robert is your mother's brother.

Ah, I am indeed. It needs to be carbonated for sure, but I don't want the juice itself to ferment, so I'm guessing that pasteurization is gonna have to be used. Probably should have mentioned that - so will that process still work?

It sounds fine if you are going to be pasteurising. I would use fresh vanilla and age it rather than vanilla extract.

Fresh Vanilla is disgustingly expensive! I've even tried the asian markets...dohhh. After all, I'm really looking to make a recipe I can repeat inexpensively.

Thanks

Try amazon, another user was saying that you can buy beans for $1.50 American each.

Ah, just checked and a 10 pack is £4.50, which is better than the £3 or so per pod that supermarkets charge...

I'll bear it in mind, but I'm gonna go with extract this time around for financial and experimentation reasons. but thanks for the brain food, if I do this again I'll hit up the real vanilla!

Woops! Sorry! I didn't see your location and I have a bad habit of assuming everyone apart from a few users I know by name are from America! I have found that I get a much better taste from fresh ingredients rather than using extracts which can end up tasting a bit chemically! Hope it goes well