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Hey Tyler,

Cider is one of those things you can make as simple or complex as you like. There’s lots of different additives you can put in to replicate various styles. I’ve never added Malic acid or tea to a cider, but have read that this is common practice. My cider is usually made with preservative free apple juice, spices occasionally (for my dry winter slider), and either a champagne yeast or the wyeast cider liquid yeast. I like it dry, so don’t worry about leaving any sweetness in the final product. Straight juice and a good yeast gives you an excellent dry cider.

The real challenge with home made cider is getting some residual sweetness left over, particularly if you are trying to replicate one of the commercial styles ones.

There’s a few options to leave residual sweetness. The easiest is back sweetening in the glass with some apple juice. You can add lactose to the cider (as it won’t ferment), but I find this gives an odd taste which I don’t like. If you keg, you can taste the cider periodically then keg and chill when you get to the right level of sweetness. This method doesn’t work when you bottle though as they will explode.

The other options are filtering to remove all the yeast (I suspect this is what most of the commercial guys do), pasteurising or adding something like potassium metabisulphate/potassium sorbate (again not something I’ve done).

You can make a few small batches to test what you like and works for you (i.e. 4L at a time).

JD