Mott's Cider w/ S-04

[BobCalamari]

Made 2 one gallon batches of cider about 3 weeks ago using Mott's apple juice, safale s-04, and a little nutrient. My intention was to make a refreshing and crisp, light bodied cider for summertime consumption.

Fermented in 1 gallon glass carboys for 3 weeks. Yesterday i racked both of them into 1 gallon carboys, and took a sample of each and was disappointed by the lack of body and flavor. The alcohol content was also very low. It tasted watered down and boring.

I knew i would not be getting a very high alcohol content without adding any sugar, but i would love to bump it up a little bit while adding some body and apple flavor to the cider.

I ended up added 8 oz of white sugar and a pinch of fresh s-04 to each carboy and shook them up last night, there is definitely some activity in the carboys today and hopefully this will boost the ABV.

Does anybody have any recommendations for adding body and flavor to the cider? I have read about using frozen apple concentrate as well as raisins and tea bags to add body and flavor to a cider. Would adding a 1/4 can of concentrate, a couple packs of raisins, and a bag of green tea help? some combination of these things? Should i add any of these ingredients to the rekindled fermentation or wait until its settled down and add to the secondary where i will age for a month?

I just got a delivery of some yeasts and air locks so i plan to make another batch of cider using Cotes Des Blancs yeast and some hazy store bought cider this week, and i would love for that to be chock full o' body and flavor.

 

[motobrewer]

what was the OG/FG? OG of mott's should be 1.050. if you let it ferment out with s04 it should have gotten pretty low, at least 5% abv.

I have found that after a month or so after fermentation the apple flavor and body kind of "comes back".

 

[BobCalamari]

I didn't take a FG before i added the sugar, so im not sure. I ended up adding some green tea and 1.5 oz craisins to help with the body. Glad to hear that it the flavor will come back, so hopefully that plus the apple flavor "coming back" will make this a decent cider.

 

[outstretched]

Motts is right around 1.050 + 8 oz cane sugar = 1.0725 roughly. If fermented to 1.000 you'd get 9.45% ABV. The craisins will also add some sugar, but I don't know how much. Apple flavor should come back as the alcohol flavor cools down. Take a current gravity and see where you're at.