We kept two bottles back from the batch that moved to the garage today in order to have a cheeky sample before Christmas lunch. Both had 5 ml of non-fermenting sugar added, one Xylitol and one Erythritol, both primed with one Fox’s carbonation drop aimed at 500 ml.
It wasn’t a true one-on-one comparison since we’d shared one bottle with ice before opening the other, but we couldn’t really tell much of a difference between the two – though Jackie thought the Erythritol was more apple-y and had slightly more carbonation. What was indisputable was that 5 ml of non-fermenting sugar results in a cider that’s toward the dry end of the scale but perfectly enjoyable. This doesn’t bode well for the unsweetened bottles, which may be on the sour side, though I’m now looking forward to finding out if the 15 ml versions – our sweetest variant – is going to be sweet enough. I hope so, because 15 ml of sugar is quite a pile for one bottle.
To be continued …