If you let yeast do its little yeast thing uninterrupted, it will march straight toward dry. That’s not a value judgment. That’s just fermentation being fermentation. Think of yeast as the world’s most focused snack machine: set it loose in apple juice and it will eat sugar, burp out alcohol and CO₂, and keep going until the sugar is gone or the yeast taps out.
So when you taste a cider that’s sweet, one of two things is usually true:
- Someone intervened after fermentation to bring sweetness back, or
- The cider was made using a traditional method where sweetness is built into the process, not added as an afterthought.
Both can be delicious. We’re not the cider police. We just like knowing why something tastes the way it does—because once you understand the “why,” you can order the thing you actually want.
What “dry” really means
“Dry” mostly means low residual sugar—the sugar that didn’t get eaten by yeast.
In a typical modern cider fermentation, most of the fermentable sugars convert into alcohol, so a fully dry cider often lands somewhere around 6–8% ABV, depending on the juice you started with.
But here’s where it gets fun: sweetness isn’t only chemistry. It’s also perception.
A cider with:
- high acid can taste bright and lean even if it has a little sugar
- tannin can feel structured and “grippy” instead of cloying
- bubbles can lift everything and make sweetness feel lighter
- temperature can shift the whole read (cold = tighter, warm = rounder)
Also: apples naturally contain a small amount of sorbitol, a sweet-tasting sugar alcohol, which standard yeast can’t ferment. So even a bone-dry cider can whisper a tiny hint of sweetness.
How most modern sweet cider happens
The most common path to sweetness today is simple:
- Ferment dry (or close to it).
- Add sweetness back.
That sweetness might come from:
- fresh juice or concentrate
- unfermentable sweeteners like sorbitol, xylitol, lactose, etc.
This approach is predictable and flexible. It can also sometimes taste a little… constructed. Not always. But sometimes you get that “this is sweet in the same way a flavored sparkling water is fruit” vibe.
And if you’re using fermentable sugar (like juice), you also have to stabilize the cider so it doesn’t re-ferment in the package. That’s where filtration, pasteurization, chilling, sulfites/sorbate, or sterile packaging can come into play.
Again: not bad. Just a different philosophy.
The old-school ways sweetness happens without modern back-sweetening
This is the part we get nerdy about at the bar.
1. French keeved cider: sweetness by design
Traditional French cidre—especially out of Normandy and Brittany—can get its sweetness from a process called keeving.
The oversimplified version:
- You start with apple varieties that naturally bring more pectin/tannin structure.
- During processing, a kind of gel cap forms and traps solids and nutrients.
- With fewer nutrients available, the yeast slows down and becomes fragile.
- Cool, careful fermentation keeps it gentle.
- The cider may be racked and sometimes bottled with meaningful residual sugar still intact.
The result is a lower-ABV, softly sparkling cider that feels naturally sweet and balanced. No sugar dump required—sweetness is the outcome of a fermentation that’s intentionally not allowed to finish strong.
2. Ice cider: yeast meets an impossible assignment
Ice cider is the dessert course of the cider world.
It’s made by concentrating sugar before fermentation. That concentration can happen in two main ways:
- Cryoextraction: apples freeze on the tree; you press frozen fruit.
- Cryoconcentration: you freeze the juice and collect the high-sugar runnings as it thaws.
Either way, you’re starting with must so sugar-dense that yeast is basically like, “I will do my best, but I am only one microorganism.”
Between the high osmotic pressure and rising alcohol, fermentation usually stalls with plenty of sugar still left. The yeast gives up and stops fermenting. The sweetness is natural, intense, and married to big apple aromatics—not pasted on at the end.
At Two Broads, we use cryoconcentration for our ice ciders—things like Frost, Chez Baco, and Elvis Legs.
The part people actually care about: balance
Whether a cider is dry or sweet, the real goal is balance:
- Acid keeps sweetness from feeling heavy
- Tannin adds structure and length
- Carbonation lifts the whole experience
So yes—cider “wants” to be dry if you just let fermentation run.
But sweetness isn’t a cheat code. It can be:
- a modern stylistic choice, or
- a traditional, technical outcome of how the cider was made
Both routes can produce something beautiful.
Tiny glossary for the curious
- Back-sweetening: adding sweetness after fermentation (juice/concentrate or unfermentables)
- Keeving: a traditional French method that limits nutrients and slows fermentation
- Ice cider: dessert-style cider from concentrated must
- Residual sugar (RS): the sugar left after fermentation
- Sorbitol: a naturally occurring, mostly unfermentable apple sugar alcohol