About
What CiderHQ is
A neutral, evidence-led cider and perry intelligence platform: what cider is, which apples make it, how it is pressed and fermented, why it tastes as it does, and what goes wrong.
CiderHQ is a reference work. It exists to answer questions about cider and perry accurately, to say how well evidenced each answer is, and to name what it does not know. Everything on the site resolves to a register of sources, and every claim records what kind of statement it is, how strongly it is supported, and when it was last considered.
The subject is genuinely difficult, which is why the site is built the way it is. A cider apple’s acid and tannin are not constants; they are measurements taken at a particular place in a particular decade by a particular method. The English four-way classification of cider fruit is one scheme among several, devised at one research station for fruit grown in one climate. Much of what circulates confidently about cider is folklore repeated without attribution. CiderHQ is designed so that none of that can be quietly smoothed over.
The governing principle is neutral alcohol intelligence, not alcohol promotion. Understanding a drink and being urged to consume it are different things, and only the first is on offer here.
What CiderHQ is not
Stated explicitly, because most of what a search for cider returns is one of these.
- Not a brand marketing site. No producer pays for placement, and none could.
- Not a bottle-ranking site. There are no scores, no stars and no “best cider” lists. A ranking is a judgement dressed as a fact, and the site has nothing to rank with.
- Not a producer directory. Producers appear only where they are historically, legally or technically necessary — the body behind a protected designation, the maker in whose cellar a documented method was developed, the company a piece of industrial history belongs to. They are never the organising structure.
- Not an affiliate shop. Nothing here links to a checkout, and no affiliate URL appears anywhere in the site.
- Not a drinking-promotion site. No page describes an occasion, a mood or a reason to have another. CiderHQ publishes no health benefits for alcohol, because current guidance from major health authorities does not support them. See the alcohol and health policy.
- Not a content farm. Prose is authored per record rather than templated from fields, and a page with nothing to say is not published.
What the site covers
Counted from the registry at build time, so these figures are what is actually held rather than what was intended.
| Family | Records | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
| Cider apples | 300 | Cultivars grown for cider, each with its classification named to a system. |
| Perry pears | 94 | Pear cultivars grown for perry, held separately because pear chemistry differs. |
| Styles | 69 | Named categories of cider and perry, with what defines each and what varies inside it. |
| Regions | 72 | Places with a cider or perry tradition of their own. |
| Countries | 31 | National traditions, with their own definitions and legal categories. |
| Protected designations | 33 | PDO, PGI, AOC and equivalent names, with the body that defines each. |
| Production processes | 119 | Steps from site selection to storage, each as a mechanism rather than a recipe. |
| Compounds | 80 | The acids, sugars, phenolics, esters and gases that decide how cider behaves and tastes. |
| Organisms | 39 | Yeasts, bacteria and moulds involved in fermentation, maturation and spoilage. |
| Faults | 52 | Things that go wrong, with cause, diagnosis and what can and cannot be recovered. |
| Sensory descriptors | 138 | Aroma and flavour terms tied, where possible, to the compound behind them. |
| Foods | 136 | Pairing records built on stated sensory mechanisms, not on suggested occasions. |
| Glossary terms | 422 | Vocabulary, including the terms that mean different things in different countries. |
| Topics | 318 | Longer explanatory articles across history, culture, orchards, serving and science. |
| Comparisons | 68 | Side-by-side treatments of the distinctions readers actually ask about. |
| Sources | 115 | The register every claim resolves to, with how far each was consulted. |
| Recorded measurements | 1943 | Numeric observations, each carrying the place, period and method it came from. |
| Names and synonyms | 2271 | Alternative spellings and regional names resolving to one canonical record. |
A fuller and more honest account — including which families are thinner than intended and what has been deliberately left out — is on coverage and gaps.
Who it is for
Anyone of legal drinking age who wants to understand cider rather than be sold it. In practice that means several kinds of reader, and the site is built so that one page can serve more than one of them without being written down to any.
Someone with a glass in front of them, wondering why it tastes the way it does. Someone growing fruit, choosing cultivars for a blend, or trying to work out why a ferment has stalled. Someone in the trade who needs a definition to be right, and the jurisdiction it applies in to be named. Students, writers and researchers who need a claim they can trace to a source. And readers who arrived because a single specific question sent them here — which is why every page is written to stand alone.
It is written for adults. Nothing on the site encourages drinking, and the alcohol policy sets out what CiderHQ will and will not say about it.
How it holds itself to that
The policies below are not decoration. Each of them is enforced by an automated check that fails the build, or by a data model that will not store the dishonest form of a statement in the first place.
- Evidence policy — claim types, tiers, freshness, and why measurements are never averaged
- The source register — every source, what it is competent for, and the gaps
- Methodology — how derived material is produced and what it does not claim
- Editorial standards — the alcohol-neutrality standard, written out
- Alcohol and health — what CiderHQ will and will not publish
- Coverage and gaps — the shape of what is held and what is not
- Corrections — how to report an error and what happens to it
Who publishes it
CiderHQ is published by HEKNO LTD (company number SC895711), registered in scotland, at Borthwick Farm Cottage, Gorebridge, EH23 4QZ, United Kingdom. It is one product in a portfolio of reference sites and is governed by that portfolio’s published instruments.