Sweetening cider/ginger beer with Splenda - odd taste?

[drf]

I have my first ever batches of TC and ginger beer on the go, and am approaching bottling. My intention was to use Splenda tablets as sweetener, probably an amount during a bulk primer and maybe some extra in some bottled. I tried dissolving a tablet in a bottle of water and that seems to work OK, but on tasting the resulting water I thought it had a really odd taste. I note that the tablets contain Lactose, so maybe that is contributing. I was wondering what people's optionions are in this regard. Rather than batch priming and risking imparting an odd flavour to the whole lot, I might compare 0, 1 and 2 tablets per bottle done individually.

Cheers

 

[RobWalker]

It tastes odd because it's **** artifical sugar basically...xylitol is available from health food stores and while it's expensive, it's a lot cleaner tasting. Lactose is less of a sweetener (although it is somewhat) and adds body and a sort of sour-ish "tang" more than anything.

Best ways to sweeten imo are pasteurizing the bottles (smaller batches only really) and to just sweeten in the glass by brewing it a little stronger than you want it with extra sugar (say 7% if you wanted it to be 5% in the glass) with some commercial ginger beer/appleade. Not the best kudos, but hell, it's easy and it works.