First cider advice (in fact first alcohol making!)

I have started to make cider for the very first time, in fact I have never attempted any home brewing before now so am a self-confessed newbie!

I have several apple trees in the garden and got a large crop so decided to make some cider with them. What I have done so far is pick them, grate them, press them and get 2 gallons of very nice tasting apple juice. In 1 demijohn I added some yeast (german white wine yeast) and a small amount of nutrient. The other demijohn I left completely au naturele with nothing added. The demijohn with yeast added started fermenting very quickly and now, 1 week later, it has slowed down to almost a complete halt. Should I add some sugar to get it going again? Or should I now just leave it to mature?

As for my other demijohn, after almost a week it hadnt started fermenting and started gathering a small amount of mould. So I syphoned out the juice into another demijohn and added a cupful of fluid out of the other demijohn. Now it seems to be fermenting away just nicely.

I have the demijohns stored in a dark cupboard with my gas boiler which gets quite warm but not hot. Should I store them in a cooler place?

If anybody has any other advice that would be great!

Check your packages of yeast to see optimal temps. Sounds like everything is going well, good luck.

The packet doesn't give recommended temperatures It is an AW4 yeast...

Do you think I should add sugar to get the fermentation going again?

Thanks
Allan

you can go to the yeasts website usually and get specs.... I just google it usually.

You definitely want to keep your demijohns as cool as possible - not near your boiler.

Bumping the sugar will raise the alcohol level which will allow the ciders to keep longer, but this will be at the expense of a bit of the apple taste. Since you only made two gallons, I'd skip the sugar and drink them with the first six months or so. Once you get some recipes that you like and you want to put some away for storage, then bump the sugar.