Is this cider recipe ok?

[tal32123]

The following is a cider recipe I made, slightly tweaking a previous one I had. Just curious if this will produce a drink that is safe to drink and won't explode as a bottle bomb or any other crazy thing:

Before you begin make sure everything that will touch your cider is sanitized properly. Not cleaned, sanitized.

ingredients:

1 gallon pasteurized apple cider (can use juice if no preservatives)
2 cups brown sugar
1 packet active dry yeast
1 big pot

Instructions:

Heat up a little bit of water to recommended temperature on yeast packet to activate yeast. Keep yeast in there for about 15 minutes or until ready to mix with rest of ingredients. Don’t need a lot of water, a quarter of a cup will do.

Boil 1 cup of water with 1.5-2 cups brown sugar, mix constantly until everything is dissolved. Keep boiling for at least 2-3 minutes.
Turn off heat.
Mix syrup and apple juice/cider first so temperature of your sugar mix/syrup is lowered and doesn’t kill yeast
Add yeast to mixture
Stir a lot to add oxygen into the mix
Put into gallon jug and add airlock. I personally put a plug on top that has a hole for hose attachment, and then make hose go into a Glass of water that is 75% filled with water
Wait 1 week
Boil .5 cups water with 2 tablespoons brown sugar. Make into syrup like before and wait until a lot of the water has evaporated and you are left with a syrup.
Siphon cider out cider into large pot and add the syrup you just made
Put everything into bottles. Grolsch bottles with flip cap work well here.
Wait 1 week and put in fridge.
Enjoy a cold one!

 

[Amadeo38]

A couple of things I can comment on:

1. Apple juice on its own (with yeast added) will ferment without the addition of any sugar. The sugar you have in the beginning part of the recipe will simply bump up the ABV. Without adding sugar, most apple juice has an OG of around 1.050, and if fermented fully, should produce about 5% ABV.
2. With 1 packet of yeast, you can easily ferment at least 5 gallons of cider. Why stop with 1 gallon?
3. Bottle bombs are a product of a combination of unfermented sugars in the presence of suspended yeast under pressure. If you are patient and make sure your batch has fully fermented before adding sugar for bottling, you will not usually have bottle bombs. To check for full attenuation, check the usual FG of the yeast you use (should be available online) and measure the cider with a hydrometer after fermentation appears to have stopped around a week in. If your number is close, you're okay to add an appropriate amount of priming sugar for bottling.
4. I have heard, although I don't quite understand the science behind it, that adding priming sugar to cider doesn't actually produce real carbonation. It may make it sparkling and fizz when you open it, but not much more than that. To play it safe, you can always put less than the recommended priming sugar in your bottles and it will still taste great.

Cheers