Costing Cider with Confidence: A Guide for New and Growing Producers

Whether you’re a brewery adding cider to your lineup, an established cidery fine-tuning operations, or someone preparing to open a brand new cidery, one thing is true across the board: you need a clear picture of your production costs. Without a clear understanding of your costs, it becomes difficult to price your products strategically. Estimating costs prior to brewing a new cider can also help you decide whether or not it will be a profitable and viable venture. 

If you are an established craft beverage producer you likely have a system in place for calculating costs on your finished goods. However, producing cider comes with unique challenges including fluctuating juice prices and yields, packaging waste, and tax structures that differ from beer. 

In this article, we’ll walk through the three core areas that matter most:

• How to track the cost of juice, and other ingredients
  
  
• How to factor in losses, yeast costs, and packaging waste
  
  
• How to use cost data to plan production, price products, and evaluate packaging sizes
  
  

Let’s get into it.

Juice is the foundation of every cider you make. How you calculate the cost of your juice will depend on how you source it. 

If you press apples yourself…

If you press apples yourself, you will need to pay close attention to the juice that each batch of apples produces. Your cost per litre may spike if your apples are less efficient or if your press run generates more waste than expected. Start by calculating the cost per pound or kilo of your apples, make sure to factor in shipping and delivery costs for more accuracy. Then record the volume of juice you were able to press from those apples. From here, you can calculate your cost per litre of house-pressed juice. Over time, you will start to find an average cost per batch of juice, but don’t forget to consider fluctuations in apple prices, too.

If you purchase juice…

If you purchase juice, cost tracking is a little more straightforward. Your supplier’s per-litre price is your starting point, but don’t forget to account for delivery charges, minimum order quantities, and the occasional variability in juice characteristics. Fluctuations in juice characteristics might require additional ingredient additions later, which could raise your per-batch cost.

If you grow your own apples…

Growing your own apples adds a few layers of complexity, and some cideries choose not to track every agricultural detail. Instead, they assign an internal value to harvested apples based on market price for comparable fruit. This keeps costing consistent without requiring a full breakdown of orchard operations. However, the right approach here will depend on your unique business. 

Once juice is accounted for, you can fold in the rest of your ingredient costs. Sugar additions, acids, nutrients, flavourings, stabilizers, and fining agents should all be allocated to the batch. When combined with your juice cost, this gives you a baseline for calculating the raw ingredient cost per litre of each cider you produce.

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Every craft beverage producer experiences losses and inefficiencies. Understanding where and why they occur is a crucial part of tracking cider production costs. As you move from fermentation to finishing to packaging, you’ll notice cider left behind at the bottom of a tank, in hoses during transfer, in filters, or as foam during carbonation. These losses are normal and often unavoidable, but they shouldn’t be ignored as they directly affect your cost per litre. The fewer litres you package, the more expensive each remaining litre becomes. Recording starting and finished volumes for every batch allows you to see where your biggest losses occur and whether certain products or processes consistently underperform.

Yeast handling is another area that requires closer attention. If you pitch fresh yeast for every batch, your costing is simple: assign the full cost of that yeast to the batch. But if you reuse yeast, the cost needs to be spread across the number of generations you typically run. This prevents under-costing batches that benefit from recycled yeast and over-costing those brewed with fresh culture.

Another factor to pay attention to is packaging loss. Cider can be sensitive to temperature and carbonation levels, and small variations often lead to foaming, low-fills, or discarded cans. Sleeves may get damaged, labels might misalign, and occasionally packaging runs produce more waste than expected. Tracking the number of wasted cans, lids, or bottles, gives you a clearer picture of the true cost of each finished product.

When layered together, losses, yeast usage, and packaging waste create a more accurate understanding of what your cider actually costs to produce.

Once you know your cost per litre, the next challenge is understanding how packaging decisions affect profitability. Each packaging format has its own cost profile. Even when the liquid inside is identical, the margins can vary significantly depending on what you put it in. Evaluating each format individually is essential because it reveals which SKUs are performing well and which ones may not be pulling their weight. 

Keeping consistent records allows you to spot patterns over time. With format-specific costs on hand, you can confidently build pricing strategies. Many cideries find that once they start tracking these details, they uncover SKUs that look popular but are barely breaking even.

Finally, taxes and fees need to be part of pricing decisions. Cider is taxed differently than beer in many regions, and ABV thresholds can influence excise levels. Recycling fees, deposits, and packaging-specific charges also vary. When all of this information is consistently entered into your spreadsheet or production software, you gain a clear and reliable system for evaluating your full product line.

By understanding your juice and ingredient costs, keeping close tabs on losses and packaging inefficiencies, and evaluating the profitability of different packaging formats, you give yourself the tools to produce better, price smarter, and grow more sustainably. 

Craft beverage producers across North America use Brew Ninja to get a better understanding of their costs and become more efficient and profitable. Interested in learning more? Schedule a chat with a member of our team.

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