John Bull Cider kit...its uber dry...will priming save it?

Hi brewing friends
I've just sampled my cider as I aracked it over to a new container. Its not unpleasant. Very ligt cridp and dry. barely tastes of apples. I kind of like it...but I can see that it'll be too dry for my wife's tastes (and friends). Here in ireland people are used to Bulmer's which is pretty damn sweet. The question I have is: should I prime th batch or prime the bottles? And do you experienced cider brewers think that the priming glucose will sweeten the finish?


PS. I had to use Milton to sterilize the second bucket, but rinsed like hell. Thoughts?

Time and patience will bring the apple flavor back around. As for it being dry (not sweet) that's something you will have to remedy with your future brewing technics. Based on your statement..."I kind of like it..." if it were mine...I'd bottle it as is and back sweeten it in the glass for your wife and friends. It's easy to just add a little juice to a glass and pour the fizzy cider on top. (or even guinness)

One suggestion I really liked was to freeze some apple juice (or other fruit juice) in ice cube trays and then just add one or two or three to the glass of cider. As it melts it will provide sweetness.

If you brewed it for others, definitely sweeten the whole batch before bottling. If you brewed it for yourself to drink (with others) then I'd sweeten it per serving. Just my 2¢, but hope it helps.

Yeah, I agree with the above. It really comes down to who this is more for. The priming glucose should have no affect on the final sweetness, sorry At least not to my knowledge (as I like to say).

If you want to get some more fruit up in there, may I suggest a process that has worked fo me a couple of times in the past? I would rack the cider off of the yeast cake into a secondary, and then add some apple juice concentrate in small, subsequent additions (one can at a time) until I get more apple flavor (check your acid as your doing it, because I don't know what your starting material was like). This happened once by accident (by my falling asleep and forgetting to finish bottling). Then I noticed that without the vigorous fermentation, the esters seemed to stick better. It worked for me the second time around (intentional).

In the end, I always use apple juice concentrate to carb I figure if I'm going to add some sugar, why not add a little more flavor. I've seen people use from 1 to 1/2 standard can of concentrate.

As for the sanitizer, I'm not sure. Sorry. Haven't used that one before.

Check out the sticky on sweetening and pasteurizing. I made some cider that turned out very dry, and like yours, my wife wanted it a little sweeter. Adding concentrated apple juice, carbonating in bottle, then pasteurizing per the sticky turned out just fine.

Thanks for all your input .... I'll check out the 'sticky' but the word 'pasteurization ' scares me a bit. If the appleyness will return over time.... My friends will just have to enjoy a dry cider... ( or more for me!)