Need help hitting target sweetness and carbonating

[MaskdBagel]

I know this thread will be redundant of a few others here, but since there are fragments in several threads, I wanted to put all my questions in one place and see if the collective experience/expertise could help me out.

I have four gallons of fortified juice bubbling away with some Red Star champagne yeast right now. I would love to have [4 gallons minus what I lose in racking/bottling] of not-too-dry, nicely carbonated cider at some point.

SG before fortifying was 1.044. Fortified with brown sugar to hit 1.076, and away it went. In theory, this could get as high as 11% if it gets really, really dry, and this yeast will tolerate up to 18%.

What I would like to do is let it finish completely, sweeten to taste with apple juice, bottle it, and let it magically carbonate to the right level without broken glass all over the place. My problem is that I have no idea how to do that with confidence.

I could just do the math to prime properly with apple juice and let the flavor end up where it ends up. I have a feeling, though, that this is going to end up very dry as is, and I'll probably want it just a little sweeter than simply carb priming would do. I feel like I'm getting slowly cornered into Xylitol or something for flavor + juice for priming, and boy, would I love to avoid that.

Alternatively, I could either stop it (via heat or sulphites) when it tastes right, bottle that, and drink it uncarbed. If I can avoid that scenario as well, I'd rather.

Any thoughts or ideas? I feel like there's some radically simple solution here that I just haven't thought of yet.

 

[Maylar]

Xylitol and priming sugar are the safest, surest way to success. What has also worked for me is to allow the cider to ferment dry, allow it to clear (pick your method), rack off the lees, sweeten and prime with FAJC then bottle. When carbonation is good, refrigerate. The cold temperature won't completely stop continued fermentation but it'll slow it down to the point where I'll get a month or so of shelf life before the fizz gets to be gushers.

Down side of this is that if you give away bottles you gotta tell people to keep them cold. Plus you need space in a fridge for all that cider. I've only done small batches this way and there's always room in my fridge for a couple 6-packs.

 

[JimRausch]

When I want a semi-sweet carbonated cider, I let it fully ferment, then prime with 1 can FAJC (per 5G batch). I bottle one in a plastic soda bottle. In 4-5 days when that bottle is turgid, I cooler pasteurize the batch. No bottle bombs, and the cider turns out where I want it.