I have a cider going for my wife and she is not into dry 7.5-8% ciders. Is hitting it with campden and crashing at ~80% ADF a bad idea? Is the best/only choice to let it go down to <1 and back sweeten with juice to raise the sweetness and lower the ABV?
My recommendations:
When it tastes good, hit it with gelatin to remove ~90% of the yeast. Wait 48 hours, rack it off the gelatin and yeast, then add sorbate and Campden in the recommended amounts to slow down fermentation even more. These chemicals don’t kill yeast but they injure the yeast pretty badly. From there you can add your backsweetening (if any), and keg or bottle as normal. If you’re bottling, carefully monitor for carbonation by popping a bottle at least once a week, and as soon as you detect any fizz at all, chill all the bottles down immediately to prevent explosions. If kegging, no worries. In any case, keep it cold so it doesn’t dry out again, because the yeast will in fact continue to work on it slowly for many months, even with sorbate and Campden in there.
So you say to let it finish before?
I always let it finish dry, then campden/sorbate and back sweeten. My wife likes it fairly sweet so the back sweetening knocks the abv down. But Dave’s way with the gelatin sounds like a good idea too, though.
You don’t need to let it go down to 0.992 (which it will if you let it!). In my opinion that’s not necessary. For a semi-sweet cider (that’s what I enjoy most), I halt all my cider ferments in the 1.008 to 1.013 range these days (1.010 plus or minus) using gelatin and cold. This keeps more of the natural sugars and flavors in the cider, rather than relying too much on juice or concentrate additions for backsweetening. I try not to use chemicals but I’d do it if I was in a hurry. Otherwise a few months in the refrigerator has been working well for me to keep the yeast action super slow, without any chemicals.
I’m glad my girlfriend doesn’t go for all the sweet crap. She likes dry wine/mead/beer/cider and also prefers dark, high abv beers. She’ll send back one of those sweet margaritas made with a mix and her favorite spirit is Islay Scotch.
There’s no backsweetening at my house.
I haven’t backsweetened at all for the past ~dozen batches of ciders, and meads as well. Halting fermentation does work, and at whatever point you like… 1.000, 1.005, 1.010, 1.015… it’s all good.
By the way… some of ya’ll might enjoy this thread from HBT, which provides the as-bottled gravities of dozens of commercial ciders from USA and Canada. All the best ones in my opinion fall right around 1.010 plus or minus. The worst ones are anything 1.020 or higher… which is like almost all of them. 
I figure I’ll start to crash it at 1.015 figuring it will still crawl down a few points. I don’t have any sorbate (campden is old stock from my pre-RO days), so I’ll look into grabbing some.
I need to get a small keg so I can keep a cider an tap for her. I’m tired of pissing away $9-12 for a six pack when good juice can be had for $6-9 a gallon.
I bet 1.005 is nice, I’ll have to try it this fall.
Last fall I experimented with adding a little mini mash of crystal malt and it was real nice. Not sweet but a little softer mouthfeel.
I also made an Apple Ale based on the recipe dmtaylor posted and it was awesome. I noticed my son’s fiancé drinking some god awful commercial apple beer a couple weeks ago so I’ll definitely make her some of that.
Sorbate is more effective at hurting yeast than Campden. Together they do a pretty great job, but still not 100% effective believe it or not. Close enough for most people though.
I’m glad you liked it! 
Just looking for close enough. Continual drying is why I want some smaller kegs for her.
I have one of those 1.75 gal cannonballs. It comes in handy.
Dave - would degassing help to dissipate the H2S ahead of kegging?
I think that would be a great idea.
Great.
In doing my research, I refuse to believe that a cider takes months from juice to glass. I don’t understand why it couldn’t be ready as quickly as a beer if handled properly. Similarly to how some say a mead takes a year+ while Ken Schramm is knocking out gold medals <month.
I’ve been reading Drew’s book and it is great, but I am finding it a bit lacking in some areas. If he covered hydrogen sulfide, it wasn’t listed in the index or in the table of off flavors. But overall there is plenty of good info beyond add yeast and stir.
Dan Gordon talked about this on The Session when Gordon Biersch started getting into cider. I think the episode was January this year? He seemed unconvinced by some of the “common wisdom” he was faced with when getting into the business.
I agree you can make a quick one that tastes great, and that might be especially true if your looking to make a fairly sweet one and your willing to fuss with it a bit. At the same time an aged dry cider is nice too. Every fall when I make cider I do at least one gallon that I simply put an airlock on a glass jug of freshly pressed cider and put it in my root cellar for a couple months, bottle it and leave it in the root cellar and drink over the winter. I have one bottle of that left. It’s usually my favorite.
Don’t forget that while Ken Schram makes apparently great quick meads he also waxes poetic about aged meads.
Funny you should bring up the Dan Gordon interview about cider. He and I apparently have nearly identical philosophies and processes when it comes to making cider.
Stevie, you can make your cider fast if you want. It’s just harder to control. If you miss racking and gelatin by just a few hours, it can go from semisweet to dry as hell in no time at all. If you like it dry, you’re in luck. Likewise, if you’re kegging and not worried about bottle bombs, how fortunate. For those of us who wish to bottle, though, low and slow is pretty much superior in my opinion. Gives us more control and tends to tire out the yeast more, so they can’t cause gushers or explosions as easily. Diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks, that’s all.
I would, however, advocate everyone try fermenting at low temperatures, in the 50s Fahrenheit, for a change, and see if you like the final flavors better. I do.