Great Story Gerard. "she married me anyway"
Thanks for the thoughts on sanitizer. I have been using one-step for the last 10 batches w/out incident but will look into the others.
I bottled my cider and used ordinary table sugar (boiled of course) for priming. I "sampled" a bottle today on a hike and am over all pleased, just a slight carbonation at this point but will develop. There's slight "odor" to it and I am hoping it will die with age. ABV is around 8% and it has some kick.