Help With Sparkling Cider

I want to make some one gallon batches of sparkling cider. I have a capper and caps along with some clean bottles, but cannot seem to find much on bottle priming for carbonation. My plan is 1 gallon cider, some sugar to boost it, and some nauttingham ale yeast. Let it go a few weeks then bottle. My question is how do I know how much sugar to use to carb it and make it sparkling ? I have regular sugar as well as dextrose. I want to carb it good but avoid bottle bombs. Should i add sugar to the whole batch? or to each bottle? or should i use the coopers carb tabs ? Any help would be great!

About 1oz of sugar per gallon should give a nice carbonation level.

I usually add 1/4 cup of sugar to a gallon of cider before bottling, as opposed to using tabs in each bottle. This will produce carbonation in about a week. More will cause carbonation faster but you risk sweetening the cider inadvertently. Less will be slower but may still work.

If you're used to tabs from beer or something, I'd think those would work, though. I'm sure it's covered somewhere here. I just prefer to sweeten before bottling since I usually make sweet cider anyway.

I add 3/4 cup for 5 gal. and 1/3 cup for 2 gal.


Never had a blow off.

What kind of bottles are you using?
Are you looking for a 'hard cider'/'english cider' feel, or are you looking for more of a champagne feel?
What temperature is the cider?

Looking for a crisp hard cider. Room temp is 68 F - anyone used the carb tabs before for cider ?

Also, does everyone pasturize after carbing ? Like wait 2 weeks then pasturize ? Or just refrigerate and drink ?

I pasteurize but I wait and wait and wait because I ferment dry and add a minimal amount of priming sugar.

I keep seeing 1 oz of dextrose per gallon before bottling. Anyone second this ? Is this slightly carbed or heavily carbed. ? Also, how much is 1 oz dextrose equivalent to in cups ?

1oz is 0.125 US cups

I should have asked for it in tsp or tbsp. or is it easier to add to each bottle ? Also, what about the coopers carb tabs, or the other smaller carb tabs I always see at my LHBS. Are they worth using at all ?

kevinstan said:

I keep seeing 1 oz of dextrose per gallon before bottling. Anyone second this ? Is this slightly carbed or heavily carbed. ? Also, how much is 1 oz dextrose equivalent to in cups ?

Click to expand...

That will get you 2.7 volumes of CO₂, which is similar to or slightly higher than a "typical" beer (although some Belgian ales can go up to 4 volumes).

So oz 1 oz dextrose what everyone is doing per gallon ? I am bottling soon And I want to get it right. Am I better off priming each bottle? Or just using carb tabs ? This is my first time trying to carbonate. Everything I read says something different - and all the advice on here I read is different also. I can't find a basic standard to go by to make sure I get this right.