How cider is made, start to finish

The path

Each step says what happens, why it matters downstream, and what you are actually deciding. The links under a step are where the depth is.

1. 1. The fruit decides most of it

   Cider is made from apples chosen for juice rather than for eating. The distinction is real and chemical: a cider apple carries more tannin and often more sugar, and many of them are unpleasant to bite into precisely because the phenolics that make good cider make bad fruit. Dessert apples make cider — most industrial cider in Britain leans heavily on them — but they make a thinner, sharper, shorter cider, and the difference is not one the fermentation can repair.

   Ripeness matters more than variety for a first batch. An underripe apple has starch that has not yet become sugar and phenolics that have not yet softened; an overripe one has begun to break down and carries whatever grew on it in the meantime. The traditional test for a cider apple is that it has fallen, or comes away in the hand, and that a cut face stains brown quickly.

   Why it matters: Every number downstream — potential alcohol, acid balance, tannin, how much sulphite it takes to protect the juice — is set here and can only be adjusted afterwards by blending, never by improvement.

   Take care here

   Visibly rotten fruit is a food-safety matter rather than a flavour one. Penicillium expansum produces patulin, a mycotoxin that survives fermentation and is regulated in juice; the control is to cut out or discard rotten fruit before milling, because nothing later in the process removes it.

   What you are deciding

   • Whether to use one variety or several. A single variety is a clearer experiment; a blend is almost always the better drink, and the reason is that very few apples are balanced on acid, tannin and sugar at once.
   • Whether to sweat the fruit — hold it in a heap for a week or two after picking — which raises sugar concentration by water loss and softens the flesh for milling, at the cost of losing anything that rots.
   • Whether windfalls go in. Ground fruit is free and it is also where rot and soil bacteria come from.

   What to measure

   • Starch iodine test — How far starch conversion has gone, which is a better ripeness signal than colour or softness. It does not tell you the sugar figure; it tells you whether to wait.
   • Specific gravity or Brix of a sample pressing — The sugar available, and so the alcohol the juice can reach. It says nothing about acid, tannin or nitrogen. Work it out.

   What can go wrong here

   • Patulin contamination
   • Mould taint

   Tools for this step

   • Potential alcohol
   • Brix to specific gravity
   • Fruit for a target volume
   • Cultivar comparison

   Go deeper

   • Knowing when cider fruit is ready — The practical tests, and what each of them actually indicates.
   • Cider apple vs dessert apple — What the chemical difference is, rather than the folklore version.
   • Sweating the fruit — Why the fruit is left in a heap, and what it costs.
   • Patulin contamination — The one fruit-quality problem that is a health question rather than a taste one.
   • Planning a batch: fruit in, bottles out — How much fruit a target volume actually needs, and where the volume goes afterwards.
   • Cultivar comparison — What one study measured across the cultivars it analysed, and where any one of them sat among the others.

   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.

   • 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.

   • A Somerset Pomona: The Cider Apples of Somerset

     Liz Copas, The Dovecote Press, 2001. ISBN 9781874336877 · reference work · bibliographic record verified, not opened 2026-08-25

     Bibliographic record verified on 2026-08-25 against Open Library: Liz Copas, The Dovecote Press, 2001, ISBN 9781874336877. The author was Long Ashton’s cider pomologist, which is why this work is registered for Somerset cultivar identity at all — it is the nearest thing to a successor to the station’s own descriptions. No copy was opened. Not digitised in any open collection.

   • Regulation (EC) No 1881/2006 setting maximum levels for certain contaminants in foodstuffs — Annex, section 2.3 (patulin)

     European Union; assimilated into UK law and maintained by The National Archives · legislation · passage verified 2026-08-24

     Registered because it answers, in law and in a number, the question of what rotten fruit actually costs. Patulin is a mycotoxin produced by moulds — principally *Penicillium expansum* — growing on bruised and damaged apples, and it survives pressing and fermentation. Cider is not lumped in with fruit juice here: it has its own line in the table, at the same limit. That is the sharpest available answer to "does it matter if some of the fruit is rotten", and it is why windfall selection is a food-safety control rather than only a quality preference.

2. 2. Milling: the juice has to be let out

   Whole apples cannot be pressed. The cell walls hold the juice and an intact apple simply resists, so the fruit is first reduced to a coarse pulp — pomace — in which most cells have been ruptured. A scratter, a hammer mill and a hand-cranked grinder all do the same job at different rates.

   Particle size is the variable that matters and it is a genuine trade-off. Too coarse and the press cannot reach the juice. Too fine and the pomace turns to a paste that seals under pressure and holds the juice in, which is the commonest way an amateur pressing yields half what it should.

   Milling also starts a clock. The moment the cells rupture, the enzymes inside them meet the phenolics and the air, and the pulp begins to brown. Whether that matters is a decision rather than a fact — a deliberate stand extracts colour and phenolic material along with the oxidation — but drifting into it because the press was not ready is not the same as choosing it. Mill what you can press.

   Why it matters: Yield is decided here at least as much as at the press, and the same fruit milled two ways can differ by a quarter in the juice it gives up.

   Hazard

   The mill is the machine in cider-making that injures people. Scratters and hammer mills run fast, take fruit by grabbing it, and cannot distinguish fruit from a hand. The injuries happen when somebody clears a jam or pushes fruit down while the machine is running, so nothing is cleared and nothing is pushed by hand until it has stopped — and a mill driven by a belt, a tractor or a power take-off is isolated at the source rather than merely switched off.

   What you are deciding

   • How fine to mill, which depends on what you are pressing with. A rack-and-cloth press tolerates a finer pomace than a basket press does.
   • Whether to let the pomace stand before pressing. Maceration extracts more colour and more phenolic material and also gives oxidation and wild organisms a head start.

   What can go wrong here

   • Enzymatic browning

   Tools for this step

   • Juice from fruit

   Go deeper

   • Milling — What the mill is doing to the tissue, and why particle size is the control.
   • Particle size, yield and phenolic extraction — The trade-off stated in terms of what a press can actually do.
   • Maceration — The deliberate stand before pressing, and what it extracts.

   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.

   • 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.

   • Cider and perry production technical training material

     Peter Mitchell / Cider and Perry Academy · reference work · registered as competent for this subject

     Searched again on 2026-08-25 and it remains the one printed source here that a bibliographic check cannot fix, because it is not a published work with an edition. It is course material issued to participants of a training programme, so there is no catalogue record to verify, no ISBN, and no lawful public copy. Its state stays `registered` for that reason rather than through inattention.

3. 3. Pressing: slowly, and not all at once

   The pomace is built into a stack — cloths folded around layers, or a basket filled — and pressure is applied gradually. Juice runs from the first moment and the rate falls away as the stack compacts. A press run that is rushed produces less juice and a cloudier one, because the pomace bed is doing part of the filtration.

   What comes out is not yet cider and is not stable. It is sweet, cloudy, full of pectin and suspended solids, and colonised within minutes by whatever was on the fruit. From this point the clock is running.

   Juice does not all arrive at once or all the same. The first run is the free run, which comes without much pressure and is the cleanest; the last fractions are squeezed out of a compacted bed and carry more solids, more phenolic material and more of whatever the pomace has picked up. Some makers keep them apart and blend afterwards, which is a real decision and not a refinement — the last pressing of a tannic fruit is a different liquid from the first.

   Why it matters: This is the last moment at which the composition of the batch can be changed by choosing what goes in. After this, everything is subtraction and management.

   Take care here

   A loaded press holds a great deal of stored energy and releases it sideways when a stack fails. A rack-and-cloth build folded badly can burst under load, and a press working against a bed that has shifted can throw the whole stack. Build square, load gradually rather than in one movement, keep hands and faces out of the plane the stack would travel in, and stop and rebuild rather than pressing on through a bulge.

   What you are deciding

   • Whether to blend juices from different varieties now or ferment them separately and blend at the end. Blending late gives more control and needs more vessels.
   • Whether to sulphite. This is the first genuinely consequential decision of the process and it is discussed at its own step below.

   What to measure

   • Specific gravity of the juice — Sugar, and so the alcohol available. Record it: without a starting gravity there is no way to calculate the strength afterwards. Work it out.
   • pH, and separately titratable acidity — Two different things that are often confused. pH governs microbial risk and how well sulphite works; titratable acidity governs how sharp it tastes. Work it out.

   What can go wrong here

   • Oxidation
   • Enzymatic browning

   Tools for this step

   • Juice from fruit
   • Bottle count
   • Potential alcohol
   • Juice analysis interpreter

   Go deeper

   • Rack-and-cloth pressing — The classic arrangement, and why the cloths are folded the way they are.
   • Press types compared — What each press design is good at, and what it costs.
   • Reading a juice analysis — What the numbers on a juice sample mean, and which of them matter.
   • pH versus titratable acidity — Why two acid measurements are not one measurement done twice.
   • Juice analysis interpreter — Your own readings placed against measurements recorded with their orchard, period and source.

   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.

   • 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.

   • Cider and perry production technical training material

     Peter Mitchell / Cider and Perry Academy · reference work · registered as competent for this subject

     Searched again on 2026-08-25 and it remains the one printed source here that a bibliographic check cannot fix, because it is not a published work with an edition. It is course material issued to participants of a training programme, so there is no catalogue record to verify, no ISBN, and no lawful public copy. Its state stays `registered` for that reason rather than through inattention.

   • The Science of Cidermaking and associated technical writing

     Andrew Lea · reference work · passage verified 2026-08-24

     Written by a food chemist who worked at Long Ashton on apple phenolics. Unusual among specialist cider writing in that it is primary-research-adjacent: the author is describing work he did, and cites the literature. This is why it is registered at tier 1 for chemistry while a general cider book is not.

4. 4. What to do to the juice before anything ferments

   There is a short window — hours, not days — in which the juice can be treated, and the treatments are largely about deciding which organisms get to work on it. Sulphiting suppresses wild yeasts and bacteria without stopping a cultured yeast added afterwards. Doing nothing hands the batch to whatever came in on the fruit, which is how cider was made for most of its history and is also how a good deal of it went to vinegar.

   The effectiveness of sulphite is not a fixed dose. Only the molecular fraction of free sulphur dioxide does the antimicrobial work, and that fraction collapses as pH rises. A low-acid bittersweet juice at pH 3.8 needs several times the free SO₂ of a sharp juice at pH 3.2 to reach the same molecular figure, which is why blending in sharp fruit is a microbiological decision rather than only a flavour one.

   Why it matters: This is where the fermentation is either given a defined starting point or left to chance, and both are legitimate — but only one of them is predictable.

   Take care here

   Sulphite dosing is a food-safety decision bounded by law: sulphur dioxide above the labelling threshold must be declared as an allergen, and jurisdictions set maximum levels. CiderHQ publishes the relationship between pH and molecular SO₂ and does not publish a dose. Take the figure from your supplier or your regulator.

   What you are deciding

   • Sulphite or not. Not sulphiting is a real tradition with real results and a materially higher failure rate.
   • Wild fermentation or a pitched yeast. A pitched yeast is a known organism doing a known job; a wild ferment is a succession of organisms and produces aromas a single strain will not.
   • Whether to keeve. Keeving deliberately starves the ferment of nitrogen so that it stops before the sugar is gone, which is how a naturally sweet cider is made without adding anything.
   • Whether to add nutrient. Apple juice is often short of assimilable nitrogen, and shortage is the commonest cause of both stuck fermentations and hydrogen sulphide.

   What to measure

   • Molecular SO₂ at the measured pH — Whether the sulphite you have added is doing anything. Free SO₂ alone does not answer this. Work it out.

   What can go wrong here

   • Excess sulphur dioxide
   • Nitrogen deficiency character
   • Stuck fermentation

   Tools for this step

   • Molecular SO₂
   • Acid blending

   Go deeper

   • Sulphiting — What sulphite does to which organisms, and what it does not do.
   • Sulphur dioxide, and why pH governs it — The relationship that makes a single dose figure meaningless.
   • Keeving — The pectin-and-nitrogen mechanism behind naturally sweet cider.
   • Wild vs cultured fermentation — What each actually gives you, set against each other.
   • The nitrogen problem in cider juice — Why apple juice is so often short of what yeast needs.

   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.

   • The Science of Cidermaking and associated technical writing

     Andrew Lea · reference work · passage verified 2026-08-24

     Written by a food chemist who worked at Long Ashton on apple phenolics. Unusual among specialist cider writing in that it is primary-research-adjacent: the author is describing work he did, and cites the literature. This is why it is registered at tier 1 for chemistry while a general cider book is not.

   • Institut Français des Productions Cidricoles (IFPC)

     IFPC · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24

     The French technical institute for cider production. The authority for the French cultivar classification families, for keeving as an industrial process, and for the pectin and nitrogen chemistry that keeving depends on.

   • Free amino nitrogen concentration correlates to total yeast assimilable nitrogen concentration in apple juice

     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.

   • Yeast Assimilable Nitrogen Concentrations Influence Yeast Gene Expression and Hydrogen Sulfide Production During Cider Fermentation

     Song, Gibney, Cheng, Liu and Peck, Frontiers in Microbiology 11:1264 · peer-reviewed literature · passage verified 2026-08-24 · covers 2016

     Open access; read in full on 2026-08-24. This is the paper CiderHQ cites against the folk rule that low nitrogen causes sulphide and adding nutrient cures it. Two Saccharomyces strains fermented the same Cornell juice at three nitrogen levels: one strain produced no detectable hydrogen sulphide at any level, and in the strain that did, the middle nitrogen treatment produced the most — twice the low treatment and six times the high. A rule that is true on average is being applied to individual batches where it can be exactly backwards, and the correction is worth a page of its own.

5. 5. Fermentation: mostly not interfering

   Yeast consumes the sugar and produces roughly equal masses of ethanol and carbon dioxide, along with the glycerol, higher alcohols and esters that make up a great deal of what cider smells like. The visible part lasts one to three weeks; the part that determines the aroma continues for months.

   Cool and slow is the general rule, and it is a genuine rule rather than a preference. A ferment run warm is faster, loses more aroma with the escaping gas, and produces more of the higher alcohols that read as harsh. Somewhere in the low to middle teens Celsius is where most traditional cider was made, because that is what an unheated stone building gives you in October.

   What "finished" means is a question about a series rather than a number. A ferment is over when the gravity has stopped moving, not when it has reached a figure somebody quoted: a cider carrying unfermentable material finishes above 1.000 with nothing wrong, and a ferment that has stalled at 1.020 has also stopped moving. Two identical readings several days apart tell you it has stopped; where the reading sits tells you whether stopping was the end or a problem.

   Why it matters: Almost every fault in the diagnostic list originates here or becomes detectable here, and almost all of them are cheaper to prevent than to treat.

   Hazard

   An active fermentation replaces the air around it with carbon dioxide, which is heavier than air, invisible, and has no smell to warn you. It collects at floor level and in cellars, pits and outbuildings, and the first effect of a dangerous concentration is confusion rather than breathlessness — so the person affected is the least able to recognise it. Ferment where there is ventilation, ventilate a closed cellar before working in it rather than after, and never enter a vessel that has held a ferment.

   What you are deciding

   • Temperature, insofar as you can control it. Somewhere stable matters more than somewhere cold.
   • When to rack — moving the cider off its sediment — and how many times. Early racking slows the ferment by removing yeast and is one of the traditional routes to residual sweetness.
   • Whether to let malolactic fermentation happen. It converts malic acid to the softer lactic acid, lowers the perceived sharpness, and brings its own aromas, some of which are wanted and some of which are not.

   What to measure

   • Specific gravity, every few days at first — How far the ferment has gone and whether it is still moving. Two identical readings days apart mean it has stopped — which is either finished or stuck, and the gravity tells you which. Work it out.
   • Temperature of the liquid, not the room — An active ferment generates its own heat and can run several degrees above ambient in any vessel bigger than a demijohn.

   What can go wrong here

   • Stuck fermentation
   • Sluggish fermentation
   • Hydrogen sulphide
   • Volatile acidity
   • Film yeast growth

   Tools for this step

   • ABV from gravity
   • Attenuation
   • Potential alcohol

   Go deeper

   • What fermentation actually does — The chemistry, stated without the arithmetic.
   • Fermentation monitoring — What to record, how often, and why the record matters more than any single reading.
   • Racking — When to move it off the lees, and what each racking costs and gains.
   • Malolactic fermentation — The second fermentation that is not a fermentation of sugar.
   • Saccharomyces cerevisiae — The organism doing the work, and what governs how it behaves.
   • When the fermentation is not doing what it should — The nine things a ferment does that worry people, each with its several causes.

   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.

   • The Science of Cidermaking and associated technical writing

     Andrew Lea · reference work · passage verified 2026-08-24

     Written by a food chemist who worked at Long Ashton on apple phenolics. Unusual among specialist cider writing in that it is primary-research-adjacent: the author is describing work he did, and cites the literature. This is why it is registered at tier 1 for chemistry while a general cider book is not.

   • Cornell Cider Research and Extension programme

     Cornell University, School of Integrative Plant Science · university · passage verified 2026-08-24

     Runs cultivar trials in New York State and publishes juice chemistry for European cider varieties grown in a North American climate — the single most useful counterweight to treating English figures as universal.

   • Yeast species associated with the spontaneous fermentation of cider

     Suárez Valles, Pando Bedriñana, Fernández Tascón, Querol Simón and Rodríguez Madrera, Food Microbiology 24(1):25–31 · peer-reviewed literature · passage verified 2026-08-24 · covers 2001–2002

     SERIDA’s survey of what is actually growing in an Asturian cellar during a spontaneous ferment, across two harvests and two pressing technologies. Read in full from the author institution’s open repository (ria.asturias.es, handle 123456789/925) on 2026-08-24. Two things make it worth citing rather than summarising: it identifies its isolates molecularly rather than by colony appearance, and it publishes the analytical composition of the finished ciders alongside the microbiology, so a reader can see the organisms and the numbers they produced in the same paper. It also contradicts the textbook account of apiculate yeasts dying out early, which is why CiderHQ cites it on that point specifically.

6. 6. Maturation: the part that cannot be hurried

   A cider that has finished fermenting is not finished. It is harsh, gassy, cloudy and often smells of yeast. Over weeks to months the suspended solids drop, the dissolved carbon dioxide comes out, the harsher higher alcohols integrate, and slow reactions between phenolics change the texture in the mouth. Nothing about this is optional and nothing about it is fast.

   Storage conditions during this period do more than storage after bottling. Cool and dark, topped up so there is no significant headspace, and left alone. Headspace is the enemy: oxygen ingress at this stage is the commonest route to a cider that tastes tired before it has been drunk.

   The useful expectation is that the cider will taste worse before it tastes better. A month or two after the ferment stops is the low point for most batches — the harshness has not integrated, the gas has not cleared, and the yeast character is still there — and a maker who tastes at that moment and concludes the batch has failed is reading a stage as a verdict. Taste it, record what you found, and taste it again in three months against the note rather than against the memory.

   Why it matters: Most home cider that is judged disappointing was tasted three months too early, and most that is judged oxidised was left in a half-empty vessel.

   What you are deciding

   • How long. There is no answer that is not specific to the cider; a tannic bittersweet cider needs longer than a sharp one, and both need longer than the maker wants.
   • Whether to age on the lees, which adds texture and a bready character, or off them, which is cleaner and lower-risk.
   • Whether to put it in wood, which is not a neutral container and is a decision about flavour rather than about storage.

   What to measure

   • How much cider the remaining rackings will cost you — How much to hold back so vessels can be kept full. Worked out in September this is free; discovered in March it is a choice between a headspace and a container you do not own. Work it out.

   What can go wrong here

   • Oxidation
   • Film yeast growth
   • Acetification
   • Mousiness

   Tools for this step

   • Topping-up reserve

   Go deeper

   • Topping-up reserve — What racking costs across a batch, and therefore what to keep aside.
   • Topping up — The unglamorous operation that prevents most oxidation faults.
   • Lees ageing — What contact with dead yeast contributes, and what it risks.
   • What ageing does to cider — What actually changes, on what timescale.
   • Barrel ageing — Wood as an ingredient rather than as a vessel.

   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.

   • The Science of Cidermaking and associated technical writing

     Andrew Lea · reference work · passage verified 2026-08-24

     Written by a food chemist who worked at Long Ashton on apple phenolics. Unusual among specialist cider writing in that it is primary-research-adjacent: the author is describing work he did, and cites the literature. This is why it is registered at tier 1 for chemistry while a general cider book is not.

   • 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.

   • Cider and perry production technical training material

     Peter Mitchell / Cider and Perry Academy · reference work · registered as competent for this subject

     Searched again on 2026-08-25 and it remains the one printed source here that a bibliographic check cannot fix, because it is not a published work with an edition. It is course material issued to participants of a training programme, so there is no catalogue record to verify, no ISBN, and no lawful public copy. Its state stays `registered` for that reason rather than through inattention.

7. 7. Blending, sweetening and deciding what it is

   Very few single ferments are balanced. Blending is how a maker arrives at a cider that has acid, tannin, body and alcohol in a workable relation, and it is the stage where a batch stops being an outcome and becomes a decision. Bench trials — small measured mixes tasted side by side — are how it is done seriously, and the arithmetic of what a mix will read is simple enough to do in advance.

   Sweetness, if it is wanted, arrives one of three ways: fermentation stopped early, keeving so that it stops itself, or a dry cider sweetened afterwards. These are not interchangeable. A keeved cider and a back-sweetened one at the same residual sugar have different textures and different stability, and the back-sweetened one will referment in the bottle unless something prevents it.

   Every route to a stable sweet cider has a fault attached to it, and they are worth knowing before choosing rather than after. Sorbate holds the yeast but is metabolised by lactic acid bacteria into a crushed-geranium smell that cannot be removed. Heat is reliable and leaves a stewed, jammy character behind if it is applied harder than it needs to be. And a sweet cider left with its sugar and no barrier at all is the specific condition Zymomonas needs to produce a raspberry-and-sulphur note that has no remedy either. There is no route that is free; there is a choice between exposures.

   Why it matters: Sweetening a cider that is then bottled without stabilisation is the single commonest route to burst bottles, and it is a pressure problem rather than a flavour one.

   Hazard

   Sweetening is the point at which a blending decision becomes a pressure decision. A cider carrying fermentable sugar and a viable yeast population, sealed into a bottle, will referment — and a bottle not rated for pressure fails by fragmenting rather than by leaking. Either stabilise the cider before bottling, or bottle deliberately for carbonation in glass that can hold it. Sweetening and bottle-conditioning together, without stabilisation, is the combination that bursts.

   What you are deciding

   • Dry, or sweet, and by which of the three routes.
   • Whether to filter or fine, which trades clarity against body and aroma — both are removed along with the haze.
   • What the blend is aiming at, which is a question about style and is worth answering before rather than after.

   What to measure

   • Volume-weighted gravity, acid and alcohol across the components — Where the blend lands before you commit the whole batch to it. Work it out.

   What can go wrong here

   • Unwanted refermentation
   • Excessive astringency
   • Thin body
   • Sorbate off-flavour
   • Geranium taint
   • Framboise
   • Cooked character

   Tools for this step

   • Blend arithmetic
   • Acid blending
   • Blend explorer
   • Sweetness decoder

   Go deeper

   • Bench blending trials — How blending is actually done, rather than guessed.
   • Back-sweetening vs arrested fermentation — Two routes to the same sugar reading, and why they taste different.
   • Filtered vs unfiltered — What clarity costs.
   • Keeved cider — The style that exists because of how its sweetness was arrived at.

   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.

   • Cider and perry production technical training material

     Peter Mitchell / Cider and Perry Academy · reference work · registered as competent for this subject

     Searched again on 2026-08-25 and it remains the one printed source here that a bibliographic check cannot fix, because it is not a published work with an edition. It is course material issued to participants of a training programme, so there is no catalogue record to verify, no ISBN, and no lawful public copy. Its state stays `registered` for that reason rather than through inattention.

   • 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.

   • The Science of Cidermaking and associated technical writing

     Andrew Lea · reference work · passage verified 2026-08-24

     Written by a food chemist who worked at Long Ashton on apple phenolics. Unusual among specialist cider writing in that it is primary-research-adjacent: the author is describing work he did, and cites the literature. This is why it is registered at tier 1 for chemistry while a general cider book is not.

8. 8. Bottling, and the pressure question

   A still cider can go into almost anything that seals. A sparkling one cannot, and the difference is not a matter of preference. Carbonation in a bottle is dissolved gas under pressure, the pressure rises steeply with temperature, and a bottle not designed for it fails by shattering rather than by leaking.

   Carbonation is achieved either by priming — adding a measured sugar to a finished cider so a small secondary fermentation occurs in the sealed bottle — or by forcing gas in under pressure before filling. Priming is cheap and slow and produces a sediment; forced carbonation is fast, needs equipment, and produces none.

   Why it matters: This is the only stage of cider-making with a mechanism for physical injury, and the injuries are caused by arithmetic errors rather than by carelessness.

   Hazard

   Do not put a carbonating cider into a bottle not rated for pressure. A still-wine bottle, a screw-top bottle or a plain glass flip-top will fail, and glass under several atmospheres fails by fragmenting. Champagne bottles with a crown cap or a caged cork are the domestic answer. Store carbonating bottles in a crate, in a cool place, and check the pressure figure before priming rather than after.

   What you are deciding

   • Still or sparkling, which determines what container is admissible.
   • If sparkling: primed or forced, and to what level.
   • Closure, which has to hold the pressure the cider will actually reach at the warmest temperature it will ever see.

   What to measure

   • Priming sugar for a target carbonation, accounting for CO₂ already dissolved — How much to add. A cider racked cold still holds gas, and ignoring it is how a target of two volumes becomes four. Work it out.
   • The pressure the result reaches at the warmest storage temperature — Whether the bottle and closure you have chosen can hold it. Work it out.

   What can go wrong here

   • Bottle over-carbonation
   • Gushing
   • Unwanted refermentation
   • Under-carbonation
   • Plastic and packaging taint

   Tools for this step

   • Priming sugar
   • Bottle pressure
   • Bottle count

   Go deeper

   • Bottle conditioning — The secondary fermentation in the sealed bottle, and what it needs to work.
   • Bottles and pressure: what glass will and will not hold — What each bottle type actually holds.
   • Bottle pressure management — The pressure question stated in terms of the operations that control it.
   • Bottle over-carbonation — The full safety note on what to do with bottles already over-pressurised.
   • Carbonation: where the gas comes from and what it costs — The whole of it in one place: where the gas comes from, what pressure it reaches, and what the glass will hold.

   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.

   • 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.

   • Cider and perry production technical training material

     Peter Mitchell / Cider and Perry Academy · reference work · registered as competent for this subject

     Searched again on 2026-08-25 and it remains the one printed source here that a bibliographic check cannot fix, because it is not a published work with an edition. It is course material issued to participants of a training programme, so there is no catalogue record to verify, no ISBN, and no lawful public copy. Its state stays `registered` for that reason rather than through inattention.

9. 9. What happens next, and what you owe

   A bottled cider continues to change. A bottle-conditioned one contains live yeast and will keep developing; a filtered and stabilised one changes more slowly but still oxidises at whatever rate the oxygen picked up at filling allows. Cool and dark slows all of it.

   If any of it is going to be sold, a different set of obligations begins. In the United Kingdom cider above 1.2% ABV is a dutiable product with a legal definition that includes a minimum juice content, and production for sale requires registration with the tax authority regardless of scale. Labelling law then governs what the bottle must say. None of this applies to cider made and drunk at home.

   Why it matters: The distinction between making cider and selling cider is a legal one and it arrives suddenly, at the first sale rather than at some threshold of seriousness.

   What to measure

   • Litres of pure alcohol in the batch — The quantity duty is charged on in the United Kingdom and many other jurisdictions — strength matters more than volume. Work it out.

   Tools for this step

   • Litres of pure alcohol
   • Duty on a batch
   • Alcohol units
   • Label decoder

   Go deeper

   • How long unopened cider keeps — What actually limits the life of a bottle.
   • Storage temperature — Why the rate roughly doubles for every ten degrees.
   • How to read a cider label — What a label is obliged to carry, and what it is free to omit.

   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.

   • 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.

   • Food labelling and packaging guidance

     Food Standards Agency / Department for Business and Trade · regulator · retrieved 2026-08-24

Where to go next

Guides that follow on from this one.

• Your first batch of cider

  I have apples and no equipment. What do I actually do?

• Making perry

  How do I make perry, and what is different about it?

• What to measure, and what each number tells you

  What should I be measuring, and what do the numbers mean?

• Carbonation: where the gas comes from and what it costs

  How do I carbonate cider, and how do I do it without breaking bottles?

Questions this answers

Shown so you can tell whether this is the guide you wanted.

• How is cider made?
• What are the stages of cider making?
• How long does it take to make cider?
• Do I have to add yeast to make cider?
• What is the difference between cider and apple juice that has fermented?

Where to go next

• All guides — The other paths, grouped by what you are trying to do.
• Tools and calculators — The arithmetic each step refers to, with the formula shown.
• Troubleshooting — The fault records behind every "watch for" above.

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.

• 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.

• The Science of Cidermaking and associated technical writing

  Andrew Lea · reference work · passage verified 2026-08-24

  Written by a food chemist who worked at Long Ashton on apple phenolics. Unusual among specialist cider writing in that it is primary-research-adjacent: the author is describing work he did, and cites the literature. This is why it is registered at tier 1 for chemistry while a general cider book is not.

• Cider and perry production technical training material

  Peter Mitchell / Cider and Perry Academy · reference work · registered as competent for this subject

  Searched again on 2026-08-25 and it remains the one printed source here that a bibliographic check cannot fix, because it is not a published work with an edition. It is course material issued to participants of a training programme, so there is no catalogue record to verify, no ISBN, and no lawful public copy. Its state stays `registered` for that reason rather than through inattention.

• Cider: Making, Using and Enjoying Sweet and Hard Cider

  Annie Proulx and Lew Nichols, Storey Communications, 1997; first published as Sweet & Hard Cider by Garden Way, 1980 · reference work · bibliographic record verified, not opened 2026-08-25

  Bibliographic record verified on 2026-08-25 against Open Library, and the verification changed what CiderHQ knows about it. The work first appeared in 1980 as Sweet & Hard Cider: Making It, Using It, & Enjoying It (Garden Way, Charlotte, Vermont) and was retitled for the 1997 Storey edition the site had registered; nine editions are recorded in total. That matters for a source cited on North American practice, because a passage in the 1980 text and a passage in the 1997 one are not interchangeable and neither is the 2003 revision. Two scans exist in the Internet Archive — sweethardciderma0000prou for the 1980 edition and cidermakingusing0000prou for the 1997 — both access-restricted to the lending library and the print-disabled collection, so neither is openable by retrieval.