Glossary · Cider
Sweet cider
Definition
In Britain and Europe, a cider at the sweet end of the sweetness scale, with enough residual or added sugar to taste distinctly sweet. In North America, the same phrase means fresh unfermented apple juice, usually unfiltered.
- Subject
- Cider
In more detail
The two senses are unrelated and the collision causes genuine confusion in recipe books and imported labelling. A North American recipe calling for a gallon of sweet cider wants juice; a British bar list offering sweet cider is offering an alcoholic drink.
In the European sense the sweetness is usually achieved by back-sweetening a dry base, by arresting the ferment before the sugar is gone, or by keeving. It is not a statement about the fruit: a sweet cider can be made from sharp apples and a dry one from sweet apples.
Where this is covered properly
The glossary defines; these pages explain. Each is described in its own words.
Style
Sweet cider
Cider in which sugar is the leading sensation, whether retained from an arrested fermentation, added after it, or produced by keeving.
Production
Back-sweetening
Adding sugar, juice or concentrate to a cider that has fermented dry — a straightforward adjustment that leaves the drink microbiologically unstable until something is done about it.
Related terms
Terms that belong to the same part of the subject, or that this one is routinely confused with.
Cider
Dry
A cider or perry with little or no residual sugar, in which fermentation has taken the sugars essentially to completion.
Cider
Medium
A cider between dry and sweet, carrying enough residual sugar to be noticeable without dominating. British retail practice uses it as the middle of a three-step scale.
Cider
Off-dry
A cider with a small amount of residual sugar — enough to soften acid and tannin but not enough to read as sweet. Competition vocabulary uses it for the step between dry and medium.
Fermentation
Back-sweetening
Adding sugar, juice or concentrate to a fully fermented cider to reach a target sweetness. Because the added sugar is fermentable, the cider must then be stabilised or kept cold.
Cider
Hard cider
The North American term for fermented, alcoholic apple juice, used because the unqualified word "cider" means the unfermented pressing there.
Chemistry
Residual sugar
The fermentable sugar remaining in a finished cider, usually expressed in grams per litre. It is what sweetness legislation and style bands are written against.
Where to go next
- Cider glossary — The whole vocabulary, by subject and A–Z.
- Comparisons — Terms that are only really clear when set against the thing they are not.
- Search — Finds terms by their aliases and by their spellings in other languages.
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.
National Association of Cider Makers
NACM · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24
The UK trade association. Useful for industry-agreed definitions and for the voluntary labelling standards its members work to. A trade body has an interest in how its product is described, so CiderHQ cites it for what the industry says about itself rather than for neutral scientific claims.
Cider, Hard and Sweet: History, Traditions, and Making Your Own
Ben Watson, The Countryman Press, first edition 1999; third edition 2013 · reference work · bibliographic record verified, not opened 2026-08-25
Bibliographic record verified on 2026-08-25 against Open Library: first published 1999 by The Countryman Press, with five editions recorded and a 2008 printing scanned by the Internet Archive as ciderhardsweethi0000benw. The scan is access-restricted to the print-disabled collection. The site had registered this without a year; it now carries one, and the first-edition date matters because a general trade book on cider written in 1999 predates almost the whole of the North American cider revival it is sometimes cited about.
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.