Finished cider questions

[smh]

So about 2 weeks ago I bottled my first cider made as follows:
3 Gallons UV-pasturized cider with Pectic enzyme added 24h before
About 3 cups white sugar added to get SG=1.058
Added nutrient
Pitched 1 pkg Nottingham
Fermented down to 1.000 in about 2 weeks and bottled (racked at one week)
I did run through the dishwasher, but I'm fairly certain that it didnt get hot enough to pasteurize.

It's now about 2 weeks later and I just cracked a bottle to make sure I'm not working on bombs.

So, Taste: Extremely well balanced, nothing too sweet/sour and no hard alcohol nose. There isn't a TON of apple flavour, but its definitely cider. It's still, and that's just fine with me.

Is this a taste that I should expect of something so young? What can I expect as it develops? How can I enhance the apple in future batches?

It's also cloudy. I'm not sure if it's normal cider haze, or if it's suspended yeast, since I didn't wait a very long time before bottling.

 

[Skyforger]

I'm glad it's so well balanced when so young. Often young cider, when fermented dry, is pretty harsh and acidic. It seems to depend a lot on the apples and the yeast varieties used.

Usually, I've found that astringency and acidity mellow out with age and you get more apple and yeast complexities.

You can enhance the apple flavor by stopping the fermentation before complete dryness - say at 1.015-1.005 or so, depending on how sweet you like it. A lot of the apple flavor is in that last bit of sugar.

Apple cider is usually cloudy, in my experience. It takes a lot of time to get it to not be. Some never clear. I would be astonished if you had clear cider after 4 weeks.