How To Make Your Hard Cider Carbonated

I've never used the pellets but I know using 1oz sugar/1gallon will give about 2.5volumes co2. But it takes 14-21days to naturally carb. If I had to venture a guess I'd say you weren't waiting long enough for it to carb. But again I've not use the coopers pellets before so I could totally be wrong.

I've not used them as after reviewing the options I decided that priming with sugar was a lot cheaper for the same results effectively.

When I was researching them though two things did come up on a couple of occasions when any discussion of using coopers carb drops.

1: the two day carb guideline is way out for most people. Loads of threads on this and other forums all point to needing to carb up over 10-14 days or longer despite the claims on the packet.

2. Lots of info to suggest that they benefit from a gentle inversion of the bottle and distribution of sediment after the drop dissolved, and carbonation then happened as expected. ( n.b. this doesn't actually make much sense to me, surely if its in solution, it's in solution, but that's what others have found works)

Ultimately, as I said, I chose not to use them but only because I couldn't get the cost benefit to balance in my mind.

Thanks for the reply people.

Looks like ill just have to leave them for a while longer and ignore the coopers guidelines!

there are so many factors involved, the best coopers can do is give you a guess. in this case their guess happened to be preposterous! the amount of time it takes to carbonate depends on, among other factors, amount of yeast present still in the cider, health of those yeast, temperature, relative activity of that yeast strain at that temp, how much sugar is left, amount of alcohol present, tolerance of that yeast to alcohol, phase of the moon, how much of a hurry you're in, the chancellor of the exchequer, and your mother's maiden name.