I was reading through the Mead forum a week or so ago (I've been getting back into brewing, and have been preparing to finally do the raspberry mead/melomel I've been planning on,) and saw a link back to this thread when someone was asking about a caramel cyser I believe. It threw me for a bit of a loop that my old thread turned into a decent source of information
It also reminded me that I never went back to try to make a good caramel apple cider, after my first one turned into a failure (I believe now that it was a combination of the base cider being too sour to begin with, and either a minor infection that eventually took over from my leaving the cider in the primary for far too long, or simply a poor choice of yeast- despite others having good results with WLP300.)
Basically, I think I tried to get a little too fancy with my ingredients, so I'm going to go back to some things that I know have worked for me in the past. I am going to use plain apple juice (Motts,) which I used in my original batch of Apfelwein with good results. I may also go with just Crystal 60, as that gave me a nice caramel flavor in the American Amber I brewed last year.
Of course, it can't all be simple
I think I am going to try carmelizing some malt extract to add to the cider, as I have read that carmelized malt can give a nice toffee-like flavor to beer (as in Scottish ales.) I'm also going to shy away from using the hefe yeast again. I am looking at two options. If I go back to using a wine yeast, I have a few packs of Cotes Des Blancs which is supposed to be good for fermenting apple musts. Or, if I want to try another ale yeast, I may try S-04 as I have read of some who have had good results with it leaving some residual sweetness and apple aroma.
Either way, I will still be shooting for a lower OG, as I do not want to make this another dry Apfelwein-like drink. The carmelized malt extract will probably be only one pound, and I may just steep the crystal in heated juice for simplicity's sake vs. having to mess around with concentrates of unknown flavor (if the cider is a little cloudy from the heat, then so be it.)
So...
5 gallons Mott's Juice
1lb light DME, dissolved in a small amount of water and boiled down to caramel
1 or two pounds of Crystal 60 (I used two pounds of Crystal before, I may not need so much with the caramelized malt)
Cotes des Blancs or S-04
I'd also be curious to hear back from some of those who may have tried making this and may not have posted their results.