My dad put a pound of sugar into a gallon of apple juice....

[MindenMan]

Do you re-use your yeast? I just seen the price of this yeast and its 10x what i pay for ec1118....ouch

I use a combination of re-use and a repeatedly stepped starter. For my 1/2 gallon or 1 gallon batches, I pour out the finished cider into a large (5 gallons or so) and re-use the yeast that has cold crashed out. I made over 20 gallons of cider off of 1 smack pack of 4184. I have tried many other yeasts over the course of the last few years, and I have to say 4184 is far-and-away my absolute favorite. No other yeast has given my the fruit esters that 4184 does, and if I need to cold crash something in the same "fermentation chamber", the 4184 just keeps on fermenting like nothing has changed. Believe me, if I knew of a dry yeast that had the same characteristics that 4184 does I might switch due to cost, but as the old saying goes,"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is generally my mantra. I always have a batch of "mother" yeast ready and waiting in the fridge, so I can always start another batch on zero notice.

 

[MindenMan]

well Juice is usually sold at about 1.050 gravity, and sugar adds about 46 per pound, so you should have around 1.140 for an OG (there is a bit of fuzzy because your volume will go up when you add sugar to 1 gallon of juice giving you more than 1 gallon of must. where if you add juice to sugar to 1 gallon, you will have 1 gallon of must.... )....

Anyway, 1.140 for an OG. abv is going to be about 16 or 17% assuming a FG of about 1.000 ...

Which is a long way to say I personally have no idea.

The idea is to match your yeast to your desired finish... If I want a cider with some residual sweetness, say of 2%, I calculate what the yeast will ferment out to, and add enough (residual) sweetness to ferment to the limit of the yeast and leave the 2% residual sugar. My hard ciders that are bound to be applejack all start right around 1.130-1.135, and finish right where I want. If I have a little "extra" sugar available it is no problem as all of my applejack batches that start a little sweet, end up like honey on the tongue after sufficient aging.