I put the carboy outside for a cheap "cold crash" so the cider is sweet and carbonated. Champagne yeast gets too tart and flat for my taste if I let it go to completion.
Also this frees up my one carboy a little earlier to start another batch in.
Leaving the tops of the bottles loose lets them keep slowly fermenting safely. Tightening the top carbonates them safely for consumption the next day. I put a gallon from each batch in a glass jug to save for wine this summer or later- I'll see how they turn out and maybe adjust the formula next winter.
Of course when warm weather and fruit flies come back my system won't work anymore. I'll try oversweetening an ale yeast then. Hope it works. At worst I'll just get stoppers and airlocks for the bottles and drink it a little tart and flat!
"adding sugar to a certain specific gravity or degrees brix"
Of course I can't argue against doing things right, but a noob really doesn't know what he wants! I'm just at the point now that I can use that information intelligently.
cool man. different strokes for different folks. if it works for you, keep on truckin :-)
this is the first table i found:
http://mbhp.forgottensea.org/sgpat.html
its easy. just get a $3 or $4 hydrometer and add sugar syrup to the cider to get the right potential alcohol level. i shoot for 10% usually, so i add sugar syrup to bring the gravity up to 1.08