>
> Will the preservatives in the apple juice I add be sufficient to
> prevent my cider from further fermentation?
>
> Any comments appreciated.

I am a beer brewer who has started some winemaking over the past couple
of years.

I have made a few batches of cider from a beer making perspective and
it was always hit or miss to retain any sweetness. Essentially, I
added sugar or honey to hit a higher OG that would result in some
residual sweetness when the yeast pooped out.

When I started winemaking, the ferment to dry, stabilize and sweeten
methind has worked very well for both sweetening meads and ciders.

I went through a process to determine how much fresh cider to add to
the fermented, stabilized (Pot meta and Sorbate) cider.

I bottled a batch of 5 gallons of fermented cider and had 1 gallon of
fresh cider. I bottled 12 beer bottles and two wine bottles of dry
cider (Dry), then added some fresh cider (48 oz) and stirred to make
sweetness level one (appx 10 percent). Twelve more beer bottles and 2
wine bottles later, I added another slug (28 oz) or fresh cider to make
sweetness level 2 (18 percent).

I ended up with four levels of sweetness (dry, 10%, 18% and 31%) in
bottles and am able to judge how they taste as they age.

My wife prefers the level 2 cider and I prefer the level one, so if I
were to do it again, i would probably settle on about 15% by volume of
fresh cider added to the dry stuff.

Of course, bottling it all dry and then adding fresh cider (or apple
juice) when drinking accomplishes the same thing.

Rob