To sugar, or not to sugar? That is the question.

I'm making hard sparkling cider with fresh pressed ciders this weekend, and was wondering how many of you like sugar in your cider. I'm using wyeast sweet mead yeast, and Coopers carbination drops to carbinate in beer bottles. I don't want too sweet, but want apple flavor. Any suggestions?
Thanks

Well sugar won't sweeten your cider...it will kick up the alcohol content of it, and dry it out. Sugar is fermentable, so it just turns into alcohol...and co2 if you are bottling.

If you want to sweeten you can add an unfermentable sugar like lactose, or you can kill off fermentation (actually the yeast) and then add sugar which won't then be fermented.

I never add sugar to my cider, no reason to make it a higher abv and dryier than it will already turn out with just juice+yeast imho.

Thanks Revvy and Freezeblade, no sugar it is.
Thanks very much

If you want a sparkling cider you just need to prime it as you would beer.

I really don't care for sparkling cider so whenever I want a more appley flavor I use potassium sorbate (2-3 day rest) to retard further fermentation and add 1 can of frozen concentrate (thawed) to the cider, stir and bottle.

You could also do the same thing if you were kegging.

Incidently, I made a batch of cider once with 5 gals of AJ, 7 lbs of table sugar and 1 lb of dark brown sugar...and it tasted great! I think I'm going to make another this weekend to have it ready for the Turkey Day/Christmas holidays.