Comparison
Cider vs cyser
What is a cyser?
In short
A cyser is made by fermenting honey dissolved in apple juice rather than in water. Both fermentables contribute, and the finished drink carries apple acid and tannin alongside honey aroma.
Its category depends on who is classifying. Mead judging frameworks treat cyser as a mead made with fruit juice as the water fraction; cider frameworks treat it as a cider with honey added. Neither is wrong, and the drink itself is unchanged by the label.
Legally, adding a fermentable that is not apple juice usually pushes the product past the juice-content threshold for cider, so a cyser is often taxed and labelled as something other than cider.
The two things being compared
Each side described in its own terms first, so the table below has something to hang on.
Cider
Fermented apple juice, with no fermentable other than the fruit’s own sugar.
Cyser
Fermented from honey and apple juice together — a mead whose water fraction is juice, or a cider whose sugar has been supplemented with honey.
Where they differ
Dimension by dimension. Where a row needs a qualification, it carries one rather than being simplified until it fits.
| Dimension | Cider | Cyser |
|---|---|---|
| Fermentables | Apple sugar only. | Apple sugar and honey. |
| Strength | Bounded by the juice. | Raised as far as the honey addition takes it, so cysers span a wide range. |
| Aroma | Fruit and fermentation character. | Honey varietal aroma persists through fermentation and sits over the apple. |
| Category under judging frameworksThe disagreement is about which tradition owns the drink, not about what is in the glass. | Cider, in one of the standard categories. | Filed under mead in mead-centred frameworks, and as a speciality cider in cider-centred ones. |
| Legal status | Cider, where juice content and strength conditions are met. | Usually outside the cider definition, because a substantial non-apple fermentable has been added. |
| Fermentation behaviour | Nutrient comes from the fruit. | Honey dilutes the available nitrogen, so nutrient management matters more than in a straight cider. |
Notes under a dimension name qualify the whole row, not one column.
What a kilogram of honey does to the juice
Honey is about four-fifths sugar — roughly 38% fructose and 31% glucose, with smaller amounts of other sugars — and about 17% water. Dissolved into juice it behaves almost exactly like sugar syrup: each 100 g of honey per litre of finished volume raises the gravity by about 29 points, and nearly all of that ferments.
So the arithmetic of a cyser can be done before anything is mixed, and it shows how quickly a cyser leaves cider strength behind. Four litres of a 1.050 apple juice — about 6.8% if fermented dry on its own — take a kilogram of honey to about 4.7 litres at a gravity near 1.104. Fermented dry, that is about 14%: the strength of a big wine, not a cider.
| Honey per litre of juice | Gravity of the mix, about | Strength if fermented dry, about | Where that puts it |
|---|---|---|---|
| None | 1.050 | 6.8% | Cider |
| 100 g | 1.074 | 10% | Already above the 8.5% at which UK cider duty and the US hard-cider rate stop |
| 250 g | 1.104 | 14% | Wine strength |
| 400 g | 1.130 | 17% | Beyond what most yeasts will finish; expect a sweet cyser |
Why a cyser is almost never legally a cider
Strength alone usually settles it. The UK charges cider duty only below 8.5% alcohol, and the United States applies its hard-cider tax rate only below 8.5% as well; as the table above shows, a tenth of a kilogram of honey per litre is enough to cross that line. Most cysers are made far above it.
A low-strength cyser does not escape either. UK cider duty applies only to cider made from a defined list of permitted ingredients, and a drink containing anything outside the list is taxed as made-wine; the US rate is likewise restricted to drinks made primarily from apples or pears. Honey is the fermentable that defines a cyser, so the definitions that turn on what went into the vessel exclude it as surely as the ones that turn on strength.
When Cider is the relevant one
The circumstances in which this is the thing being described, rather than a reason to prefer it.
- Nothing fermentable beyond apple juice went into the vessel.
- A juice-content definition is what the question turns on.
When Cyser is the relevant one
The circumstances in which this is the thing being described, rather than a reason to prefer it.
- Honey was fermented alongside the juice, rather than added afterwards for sweetness.
- You are explaining why a drink made from apples is entered as a mead.
A misconception worth clearing up
This comparison exists partly because of the claim below, which is repeated often enough that most readers arrive holding it.
A cyser is a cider with honey stirred in at the end.
What is actually the case: The honey is fermented, not used as a sweetener. A cider back-sweetened with honey after fermentation is a different product: its honey sugar is still present, whereas in a cyser most of it has become alcohol.
Related comparisons
Distinctions that turn on the same thing, or that this one is routinely confused with.
Cider vs mead
Cider ferments the sugar in apple juice; mead ferments honey diluted in water, which brings almost no acid, no tannin and very little yeast nutrient with it.
Cider vs fruit cider
A fruit cider has fruit other than apple added, as juice, purée or flavouring — which in most jurisdictions takes it outside the legal definition of cider and into a separate labelled category.
Back-sweetening vs arrested fermentation
Both produce a sweet cider, but back-sweetening adds sugar or juice to a dry cider afterwards, while arresting stops the fermentation before the sugar is gone.
What people ask next
Questions readers ask about the things this page mentions. Each one goes to the section that answers it rather than to a page written to receive the question.
- How do cider makers make a cider sweet without it refermenting — Back-sweetening adds sugar to a finished dry cider, which then has to be stabilised or pasteurised or it will referment in the bottle. An arrested fermentation stops before the sugar is gone, by cold, by racking or by keeving, so the sweetness was never added.
- Is fruit cider still cider — It depends on the jurisdiction and on how much apple juice is left. In the United Kingdom a product must contain at least 35% apple or pear juice to be taxed as cider, so a heavily flavoured drink may be sold as something else.
- What is the difference between cider and mead
Where to go next
- All comparisons — The rest of the pairs, grouped by what kind of difference is at stake.
- Glossary — Either term on its own, defined without a second thing to hold it against.
- Learn about cider — The background these pages assume, written from the beginning.
Sources
What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.
BJCP Beer Style Guidelines — cider and perry categories
Beer Judge Certification Program · classification framework · retrieved 2026-08-24
Opened on 2026-08-24, and the edition matters. CiderHQ registered the 2015 cider guidelines; BJCP has since published a 2025 cider edition, and the old URL now redirects into the current guidelines index. A competition style guide is a dated framework rather than a standing definition, and citing the wrong edition of one is the same class of error as citing a superseded specification. CiderHQ treats BJCP as one competition framework among several and never as the universal cider taxonomy.
The New Cider Maker’s Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide for Craft Producers
Claude Jolicoeur, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2013. ISBN 9781603584739 · reference work · bibliographic record verified, not opened 2026-08-25
Bibliographic record verified on 2026-08-25 against the Open Library union catalogue: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2013, ISBN 9781603584739, one edition recorded. That establishes the citation points at a real book in a stated edition, which is what a citation needs and is all it establishes. No copy was opened and nothing is quoted from it. The book itself is in print and not digitised in any open collection; where CiderHQ needs a figure from this territory it uses an accessible research source instead and says so.
Alcoholic Products Technical Guide, section 2 — alcoholic products (formerly Excise Notice 162)
HM Revenue & Customs · regulator · passage verified 2026-08-24
What may be called cider or perry for UK duty purposes. The substantive text now lives in section 2 of the Alcoholic Products Technical Guide rather than in the notice itself, and the passages below were read there. The widely repeated "35% juice" figure checks out — but note two things the figure alone hides: it is a tax threshold rather than a quality standard, and concentrate and dilution both count towards it.
Alcoholic products duty rates and the Alcohol Duty regime
HM Revenue & Customs · regulator · passage verified 2026-08-24
The UK alcohol duty system was reformed in August 2023 onto a strength-based footing, with draught relief and small producer relief alongside it. The rate table was read on 2026-08-24 and carries an effective date of 1 February 2026. CiderHQ records the band *structure* — which is stable and explains why producers make the strengths they do — and states rates only with that effective date attached, because a rate with no date on it becomes permanent and wrong.
Hard cider tax class and labelling requirements
Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) · regulator · retrieved 2026-08-24
Opened on 2026-08-24. The address CiderHQ had registered — ttb.gov/wine/hard-cider — now returns 404; the bureau publishes its cider material at ttb.gov/cider/cider-resources, and the record has been corrected. The substantive hard cider definition is in 27 CFR §§24.10 and 24.331, which CiderHQ cites directly and has verified to the passage; this page is the regulator’s own gateway and its industry circular pointer, not the operative text.
Boudreau, Peck, O’Keefe and Stewart, Food Science & Nutrition 6(1):119–123 · peer-reviewed literature · passage verified 2026-08-24 · covers 2014–2015
Open access; read in full on 2026-08-24. The paper that gives cider its own nitrogen numbers instead of borrowing wine’s. A hundred and eight apple samples from Virginia over two seasons, with the two fractions of assimilable nitrogen measured separately — which matters, because the finding is that apple juice is short of ammonium specifically, and that the wine practice of measuring both fractions may be unnecessary for apples while the wine practice of assuming there is enough nitrogen is badly wrong.