Recipe help, help me choose yeast and recipe!

[wulfsburg]

Hello,

After years of absence on the forum, I have recently brewed some beer and am going to attempt my first apple cider.

I am going to buy 5 gallons of 100% applejuice (probably from costco) and then add some brown sugar , cinnamon and maybe a tiny bit of ginger.

I need help deciding on a yeast. This will be going on gas, not in a bottle.

I have narrowed it down to:
Safbrew S-33
Red Star Cote des Blancs
Lalvin EC 1118

I don't want it super dry, as this is mainly for SWMBO, so I am leaning towards the Safbrew. She likes cider a little bit more on the sweet side.

Also, I want the abv to be around 7%. I plan on adding brown sugar to up the gravity, but not sure how much. Also, not sure how much cinnamon and ginger to add to put a little bit of flavor in there. After it is done fermenting I am going to add 1 can of apple concentrate per gallon to add that apple flavor back to it.

Suggestions/thoughts?

Thanks!

 

[mrdail87]

I've always had great results from Safbrew, although I've never used S-33 in particular.

If you're looking for cider recipe help, you'll probably get better feedback on the cider board: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f32/

 

[sanguine]

If you're not looking for super dry I would probably steer you away from the EC-1118 - it tends to give you a really dry result, at least it has in my ciders and meads.