Nottingham + Mint Tea + Apple Juice = Buzz Cider!

Ok so I wanted to do another cider. The last one I did with the Cote De Blancs yeast came out too dry to be called cider, more of an apple wine than anything. I started this knowing that the best cider I have made yet was with ale yeast, so I decided to use my go-to favorite, Nottingham dry yeast. I took the kids to Wal-Mart and got 4 gallons of Motts apple juice, four Wal-Mart brand apple juice concentrate cans, a 2 lb. container of Demerera(sp?) sugar, and a box of Bigelow Mint Tea bags.

So Recipe:

4 Gallons Apple Juice
4 Cans AJ Concentrate
2 lbs. Demerera Sugar
12 Bigelow Teabags
1 Pack Nottingham Dry Yeast


Procedure:

I brought two gallons of the juice up to 140, took it off the heat and then put in the teabags. Steeped for 5 minutes, added the sugar, then added the partially thawed concentrate cans to cool it down. Added the whole pot to a carboy that I had already partially filled with the other two gallons of room temp cider. Topped up to 5.5 gallon with cool water and pitched rehydrated Nottingham.

Just thought I would share my newest trial and get some thoughts. I think I will try to carb this stuff, the ale yeast shouldn't take it totally dry and I think I can use dextrose to get a little fizz off of it later.

I saw the Demerera they had in Wally World, and I'm curious to see how this works out.

What is Demerera? What was the OG and what do you expect the yeast to take it to (FG)? I guess that leads to another question- if a yeast on attenuates so far because of ABV (if that's a true statement) is there still residual yeast to naturally carb with or do you need to pitch additional yeast?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demerara_(sugar)

I am not scientific enough about brewing to get out my hydrometer, I have one that came with the first kit I got, but I have never used it. So about 7 batches of cider, one batch of mead, and around 25 batches of beer later, I prolly won't just up and start. So I am going on my experience with sugar poundage and juice/concentrate volumes to estimate if it will be like rocket fuel right off the bat or drinkable after some shorter conditioning time. I do know from the last ale yeast batch of cider that the yeast will crap out and leave some residual sugars at this concentration. The last sugars left are much harder to eat(or cannot be eaten) for the yeast than the pure and easy dextrose I throw in, so the last batch did carb up but took like 4 1/2 weeks to do it. This one has a little less sugar in it than the last batch did, I used the four gallons of juice and 10 concentrate cans on the last one. Plus I might put it in bottles with some fermentation not completed and then test to see when to put them all in the fridge. As you can see I play it fast and loose like the brewers of old.

Usually, there is enough residual yeast to carbonate without pitching more. As BrewFrick said, you have to add an easily edible sugar to get it started again, but I haven't had trouble getting it to carbonate without pitching a second yeast.