Instructions: I used the smack pack of yest, my biggest concern was the wild yeast in the cider. I really did not want to pasteurize the whole five gallons so I used double yeast.

Bring one gallon of the cider to 160 degrees. Add 5 cinnamon sticks, honey and brown sugar. Stir for 15 minutes. You want the cinnamon to flavor your starter.

Meanwhile pour 3 gallons of the fresh cider into your primary fermenter. Reserve 1 gallon for later!

Pour the "wort" into your primary. When the temperature gets down below 80. Pitch your yeast.

Ferment for 1 week in primary.

For secondary ferment. Pour the remaining gallon that was reserved earlier into your secondary. Siphon the week old cider on top of the fresh. Cap and ferment for 1 more week.

At bottling time, bring 2 cups of water to a boil with the 5 remaining cinnamon sticks. Boil for 15 minutes and then add the 1/2 cup of bottling sugar. Bottle as normal.

Allow to condition in the bottle for 2 weeks.

This stuff is great! My friends love it! Its pretty strong, unfortunately I failed to do the measures before and after. BTW, I created this recipe. I read every cider recipe that I could find on the net and this is sort of a combination of the best and most sensible formulas I found.

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