Customizing your cider

If you follow our instructions, you should end up with a nice, dry cider. It’s a little more complicated for anything sweeter.

‘Keeving’ is a traditional way of retaining sweetness in cider, favoured by the French and the most patient of cider makers. It’s a dark art, involving the encouragement of calcium to react with the pectin in a juice made from low-nutrient apples. The resulting naturally sweet cider can be bottled without risk of re-fermentation.

For the small-scale, amateur cider maker, by far the easiest way of creating a sweeter cider is to add an artificial, non-fermentable sweetener at bottling stage. Sucralose is the ideal (if expensive) addition. For those who like fizzy, add 10g/¼oz of sugar to each 1 litre/35fl oz/4 cups before bottling. This will encourage a secondary fermentation and, although this will produce some sediment, it’s a good trade-off for a bit of sparkle.