Hi - very new to brewing. I did a few gallons of cider+brown suger+yeast in the gallon jug this fall just to give it a whirl and ended up with some really decent swill... I carbonated te cider in some reused 20oz bottles (sanitized, of course) with a small amount of white sugar (1tsp per bottle or so).
Apparently, my Dad liked the batch I gave him so much he gave a me a gift certificate to my local home home brew shop (actually, his local shop, but anyways...) so I am going to scale up my production.
This recipe sounds fantastic, so I think it will be #1 for me. Couple of quick questions, though. First, if I ferment this in a bucket, should I use a racking cane type setup to bottle, or can I get a bucket with a spigot and use that?
Second, I want to carbonate in the bottle again (no keg, and really like my cider carbonated) but I am unclear how you add priming sugar to the cider without stirring up all the sediment? For my smaller batched I put a little suger right in the bottle, filled it and gave it a good shake/roll. Sounds like people are adding the sugar to the cider before bottling though? The stuff I made this fall came out tasty but with a ton of dead yeast/sediment in the bottom of the bottle (looks gross)! I figured with a racking cane/spigot I would be able to bottle without disturbing the sediment and clean it up significantly, but I just can't figure out how the priming sugar is added?
Lastly, I don't have fridge space to store all of this once the carbonation is right. Elsewhere on this site I read about people pasteurizing their brews in the bottle by submerging them in 160F water for ~10min which would stabilize it for long duration room temperature storage. Would that work for this?
Thanks a TON for any help! Can't wait to get started.
Rob