Cider Apple Juice Yield Calculator (Apples to Juice, Blend, SG & ABV)
How much juice will your apples give? Litres and gallons of juice from kilograms, pounds or bushels of apples by press type and fruit condition, the blend of sweet, sharp, bittersweet and bittersharp apples with its likely acid and tannin, the expected gravity and ABV for your finish, sugar to reach a target strength, fermenters, bottles, yeast, sulphite and priming sugar.
How it works
juice kg = apples kg × press yield (50–78%) × condition (× 1.06 with pectic enzyme) · juice L = juice kg ÷ SG · blend SG, acid and tannin = weighted averages of the class values · potential ABV = (OG − FG) × 131.25 · sugar to raise the gravity: 1 g/L ≈ 0.384 points, ≈ 20 g/L per 1% ABV · bottles = litres × (1 − losses) ÷ bottle size
An apple is about 80% water, but how much of it a press releases depends on the mill and the pressure. A kitchen juicer or a hand screw press with coarse pulp gives about half the fruit weight as juice; a well-milled cheese under a rack-and-cloth press gives about two-thirds, and a commercial press with enzyme more than three-quarters. Sweating hard fruit for a week or two and adding pectic enzyme both help. What the juice ferments into is set by the blend: dessert apples bring sugar, cooking and crab apples the acidity that keeps cider fresh and safe, and true cider apples (bittersweets and bittersharps) the tannin that gives body. The sugar, read as specific gravity, fixes the alcohol: each 10 gravity points fermented away gives about 1.3% ABV, so a sweeter finish leaves less alcohol. Enter a measured gravity, your own press yield, the finish, fermenter and bottle sizes under the options, and the calculator gives the juice, the cider style, the alcohol, the sugar to reach a target, and the yeast, sulphite, enzyme and priming sugar to go with it.
Worked example
A hundred kilos of sweated apples through a rack-and-cloth press give 65 kg of juice, which at an expected SG of 1.048 is about 62 L, plus 35 kg of pomace. A blend of 40% dessert, 30% sharp and 30% bittersweet fruit has about 4.4 g/L of acid and 1.6 g/L of tannin, a balanced blend, and reaches 6.3% ABV fermented dry. It fills three 23 L fermenters; after 7% racking losses about 57.7 L of cider fill 115 bottles of 500 mL. To reach 7% you would add about 0.86 kg of sugar (14 g/L).
Sources: Andrew Lea, Craft Cider Making — press pressure and juice yield · Vigo Presses — juice yields by press type
Frequently asked questions
How many litres of juice from a kilo of apples?
About 0.48 L with a kitchen juicer or a hand screw press, 0.62 L with a good rack-and-cloth press and up to 0.74 L with a commercial belt press. Put another way, a US gallon of juice takes roughly 13½ lb of apples on a good rack-and-cloth press and about 17½ lb on a hand screw press.
Can I make cider from supermarket eating apples only?
Yes — it will be light, low in tannin and a little flat. Add 20–30% sharp apples (Bramley, Granny Smith) or 2–3 g/L of malic acid for balance, and a pinch of grape tannin or a few crab apples for grip.
Why is my yield so low?
Hard, freshly picked fruit and coarse pulp are the usual reasons. Sweat the apples until they give slightly to a thumb, mill to a fine pulp, build thin layers in the press, press slowly and consider pectic enzyme. Hand basket presses without a proper mill rarely beat 50%. Enter your measured yield under More options to plan the next batch.
How do I know how strong my cider will be?
Measure the juice with a hydrometer before fermenting. Each 10 points above the final gravity is about 1.3% ABV, so juice at 1.050 fermented dry to 1.000 gives about 6.6%. If you stop or back-sweeten at 1.010, it will be about 5.2%.
How much sugar raises the ABV of cider?
About 20 g of sugar per litre of juice raises the potential alcohol by 1% ABV, since 1 g/L adds about 0.38 gravity points. For 20 L of juice, going from 6% to 7% takes about 400 g of sugar.
Related calculators
Yields and juice chemistry vary widely with variety, season and equipment; the class values are typical ranges from cider-making references. Fermentation and bottling carry food-safety and pressure risks — follow tested procedures.