Just take a quick search in the recipes section and you'll find a HEAP of sweet cider info, and its not difficult.
Sweet still cider is easy, yes...but sweet
and sparkling when conditioning the cider naturally is difficult. If you want a sweet AND sparkling cider, my advice is not terrible at all, splenda is an excellent way of backsweetening...the only other tried and true way to have a sweet and sparkling cider is to kill the yeast and force carb in a keg. If you don't have a keg and are planning on bottling a sweet/sparkling cider it's tricky,
especially if you are using champagne yeast, which will ferment out every ounce of sugar and keep on going right up to 15% alcohol content or more!
Mowen, if you are just going for a basic sparkle than a capped bottle will hold up to the pressure fine...if you want that champagne "blow the cork across the room" sparkle, you can use more priming sugar and, yes, I would reccomend the mushroom cork and wire cap.
There is probably lots of info on how to use a hydrometer on this site...but the long and short of it is, it's simply telling you how much sugar is in the water, the higher the hydrometer reading, the sweeter the cider, wine, etc. The starting point/Orriginal Gravity "OG" is used primarilly for the purpose of comparring to the Final Gravity "FG" once fermentation is complete to calculate your alcohol content "ABV" (Alcohol By Volume). The basic formula is OG-FG * 132.25 = AVB in a %. The OG also gives you a good idea how to replicate the cider if you want to brew it again. Say you like this years batch, cider pressed in Sept is less sweet than cider pressed in Nov. So next year you have an OG goal to get your cider to so you can brew pretty close to the same cider next year.
Sweetness of the cider is more relevant to the yeast you use. All yeast will die when the alcohol reaches a certain point, the alcohol kills the yeast. A beer or english cider yeast will die out, usually by a max of 8-9% alcohol level, each strand of yeast will tell you where it can brew up to...A sweet wine yeast (Like Red Star Montrachet) will usually kick out around 11-12%; And a champagne/dry wine yeast (like Red Star Pasteur, or Lalvin D-47) can go up to 15- sometimes 18% before the alcohol kill it. SOoooooo, if you are brewing your cider with a wine yeast, it's going to be pretty dry, and if you backsweeten too much before you bottle, it will just keep fermenting and fermenting until there is either no sugar left, or your bottle blows up. By the way, a blown up bottle is bad, you don't get to drink that...
I don't know what sa101 is talking about when he says the longer you ferment, they dryer it is...
that's terrible advice; it's true to a point, but dryness is more relevant to the type of yeast you use, if you stop fermentation (with potasseum sorbate, or campden tablets or by other means), than you can't have a sparkling cider unless you keg...period...
If sa101 knows of some magic way to make the yeast stop fermenting in the bottle once its reached carbonation, and yet still have sugars left over to make it sweet, I'd love to hear them.
If you're aiming for a
dry, sparkling cider, than just stick with your orriginal plan, because that's what you'll get.