First Cider / Apfelwein

I just picked up a 3 gallon carboy to mess around with this. I wanted to do an apfelwein but as I looked into it I may want to go more of a cider route (less of a wine style).

So here is what I planned to do with the recipe, Please Im open to any suggestions.

2 3/4 gallons of apple juice (enough to fill up the carboy but not overfill)
1lb dextrose
Red Star Champagne Yeast and Nutrient
Id like to end up carbing and bottling.
I know I want to add spices to give it a cider feel (cinnamon and what not) just not sure how much. And before I decide to bottle Ill take fill up a glass and sweeten it with some kinda non-fermentable sugar/sweetener and find out how much I need to add to the batch.

Am I somewhat going in the right direction or am I totally off?

Totally just out of the blue haven't done much research...

You're changing a lot of variables that I wouldn't know how it would react even though I've done a few apfelweins. If you want to go more cidery you might want to change out the yeast to either a cider yeast or ale yeast (US-05 for example).

Look through the cider recipes and see if there is any kind of pattern for adding cinnamon and how much per gallon to get an idea of how much to use.

For back sweetening, I dunno...that will take some experimenting I think.

I plan on making a kegged batch next year where I can back sweeten with apple juice concentrate and then force carb it but I still like the Ed Worts apfelwein though I prefer to let it sit in a glass for about 15 minutes after pouring and then stirring the crap out of it to get rid of most of the carbonation.

Looks pretty good to me. I've never backsweetened with nonfermentable sugar, so I can't comment on that. I would be tempted to use a different yeast. Champagne yeast will ferment to dryness. I'd probably use D47, Cotes des Blanc, or Wyeast Sweet Mead so it finishes with a little residual sugar.

Yea thats why Im going to do a smaller batch...

I started looking through the cider recepies and noticed how much spices some people are using. I just wanted to start out with a ball park amount. Ive got an extra package of champange yeast and ale yeast so I might split the batch and see what the differences are.

Thanks for the suggestions.