Cider apple
Kermerrien
The Breton bitter apple most often named on a bottle: firmly tannic, distinctly aromatic, and one of the few French cider cultivars with a genuine claim to standing alone.
Also written Kermerien.
- Classification
- Bitter — French cider apple families
- Harvest
- Late (Late October)
- Single varietal
- Established as a single-varietal cider
- Blend role
- Tannin and structure, Aroma, Vintage quality, Late season
- Origin
- Finistère, Brittany
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Flowering
- Pollination group 4
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Biennial bearing
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Good
How it is classified
French cider apple families
Bitter · Amère
Very high tannin with low acid — more tannic than the bittersweet family and used in smaller proportion.
Basis: Tannin above 3 g/L and acidity below 3 g/L as H₂SO₄.
Assigned to the bitter family, though some Breton sources place it in the bittersweet one. The difference is real and reflects site as much as disagreement: its polyphenol content varies substantially between orchards.
Every classification on CiderHQ names its system. Why there is more than one.
What it contributes to a blend
A direction, not a measurement. These bands are the level of resolution the evidence supports, and they say which way adding this fruit pushes a blend rather than what the finished cider will be.
| Axis | Typical | Range |
|---|---|---|
| Acid | Low | |
| Tannin | Firm | |
| Sugar | High | |
| Bitterness | Marked | |
| Astringency | Drying | |
| Aroma | Pronounced | |
| Body | Full |
French bitter family placement, with wide bands because the recorded disagreement over its class is itself evidence of variability.
A hard, dry bitterness with a resinous edge, and an aroma that persists through fermentation. More interesting than most bitter fruit and correspondingly easier to overdo.
Aroma
Descriptors associated with this fruit. Each names a character with a known cause, and association is not a promise — what reaches the glass depends on the ferment as much as on the apple.
- Apple skin — The dry, faintly waxy and slightly bitter aroma of the fruit’s surface rather than its flesh, carried by cuticular waxes, hexyl esters and skin-concentrated phenolics.
Measured analysis
Each figure is shown with where and when it was taken. They are not averaged: the same cultivar grown in another climate genuinely gives different numbers, and collapsing them into one would be the most misleading thing this page could do.
Measured on the fruit
Measured on the fruit itself, before anything was done to it. These figures hold whatever was later made from the juice.
| Property | Reading | Where | When | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fruit diameter | 61 mm | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| Juice yield | 395 L/t | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
Measured on the juice
Measured on juice as pressed, before fermentation. This is where most cider analysis lives and what the classification schemes are defined on.
| Property | Reading | Where | When | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brix | 12.5 °Bx | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| pH | 3.88 pH | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| Specific gravity | 1.050 SG | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| Total acid | 0.260 % w/v | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| Total tannin | 0.320 % w/v | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
How these were measured
- Permanganate titration against indigo carmine, reported as tannic acid equivalent
- Titration, reported as malic acid equivalent
- Published as 2.41 inches; converted at 25.4 mm to the inch
- Juice pressed from 25 fruit, 2015–2017 only. Published as 179 mL/lb; converted at 2.204623 lb to the kilogram
Compare within a study to see where these figures sat among the other cultivars the same work analysed — which is a more robust statement than the figures themselves, because absolute values move between laboratories and the ordering inside one study mostly survives.
Watched in the orchard
What named research programmes recorded about this fruit at their own sites. Bloom, harvest and cropping belong to a place and a run of seasons rather than to a cultivar, so they are reported site by site rather than merged.
WSU Mount Vernon cider cultivar trial
Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center, Mount Vernon, Skagit Valley, Washington · 2002–2017 · Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center
Maritime, with cool summers and mild wet winters — the closest North American analogue to the English West Country, and the reason the programme planted European cider fruit here rather than east of the Cascades.
- Mean full bloom
- 12 May
- Harvest
- 1 October
- Bloom density
- 3 of 5
- Productivity
- 3.1 of 5
- Growth habit
- Spreading
- Bearing
- Semi Spur
- Alternate bearing
- Yes
- Blind wood
- 1 of 5
- Rootstocks
- MM.106
Filed here as bittersweet.
Color straw to gold, moderately bitter. Cidery, creamy, bitter aftertaste lingers, but not harsh, good blender Fruity, banana, bubblegum.
Recorded by the programme from professional cidermakers in the region. One panel, one place, one set of seasons — a description of these ciders rather than of the cultivar everywhere.
Juice characteristics measured on 250 mL of pressed juice; juice yield from 25 fruit, 2015–2017 only. Bloom density, productivity and blind wood are the site’s own subjective 1–5 ratings. Figures are means across the seasons each cultivar was in the trial.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Late
- Flowering
- Pollination group 4
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Cropping
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Good
Late, and sweated in a heap before milling as a matter of course in Breton practice.
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Scab | moderate | — |
| Canker | moderate | — |
Juice and pressing
- High procyanidin content
- Low nitrogen
- Aromatic fraction unusually persistent for a bitter apple
How it is used
- Tannin and aroma in Cidre de Bretagne blends
- Single-varietal bottlings, which are more common for Kermerrien than for almost any other French bitter
On its own
Established as a single-varietal cider
Bottled alone by a number of Breton producers. The result is firmly tannic and low in acid, and it is generally left with residual sugar; a fully dry single-varietal Kermerrien is a hard drink rather than a balanced one.
About Kermerrien
Kermerrien is the Breton answer to the question of what a bitter cider apple can do beyond supplying grip. Its tannin is high enough to place it in the bitter family, but it carries an aromatic character that most fruit at that phenolic level does not, and that combination is why it is one of the very few French cider apples routinely sold under its own name.
Its classification is genuinely unsettled, and the disagreement is informative. Sources place it in the amère family and in the douce-amère family, and Breton growers will tell you that a Kermerrien from a thin upland site and one from deep valley soil are not the same drink. Polyphenol content in cider apples is strongly site-dependent, and Kermerrien appears to be more responsive to site than most, which means a classification statement about it carries less predictive weight than the same statement about, say, Bedan.
As with the Norman bitters, its behaviour assumes keeving. The juice is low in nitrogen, the ferment is expected to stall, and the residual sweetness left behind is what makes the tannin readable rather than punishing. A fully attenuated Kermerrien is a legitimate thing to make and it is not what the fruit was selected for, which is worth saying plainly because the single-varietal bottlings that reach export markets are not always made the traditional way.
In the orchard it is vigorous, strongly alternate-bearing and slow to settle into a cropping rhythm, so it is planted in smaller blocks than the Breton sweet fruit and treated as a quality crop rather than a volume one.
Names, origin and identity
Cultivar naming is the hardest problem in cider fruit data. The same tree carries different names across ten miles, and two different trees have shared a name for two centuries.
Origin · traditional account
Named after a Breton place-name element (kêr, a hamlet or homestead). Local origin is very likely; documentation of it is not.
Why it matters
- One of the few French cider cultivars whose name reaches consumers, because it is bottled under it
Related cultivars
Recorded relationships, including the ones this fruit is routinely confused with.
Fruit that plays a similar part
Cultivars sharing a classification under the same system and a comparable role in a blend. Not a similarity score — a stated relationship.
Fréquin Rouge
A small, hard, deeply tannic Norman bitter apple that gives a French blend its grip, and the most widely planted member of a whole family of local Fréquins that are not all the same fruit.
Vilberie
A very late Norman bittersweet grown widely in England, carrying tannin at the top of the range and ripening after almost everything else has been pressed.
Avrolles
A hard, very late French bitter apple, one of the group brought to England in the 1880s import wave and analysed there, and now scarce on both sides of the Channel.
Cartigny
A hard northern French bitter apple of the type used in small proportion for phenolic concentration, now uncommon and thinly documented.
Fréquin Audièvre
A member of the Norman Fréquin group of hard bitter apples, distinguished from Fréquin Rouge locally and not always distinguished from it in the nursery trade.
Marie Ménard
A small, dark red Breton apple with among the highest polyphenol contents of any cultivar in French cider use, planted in small quantity and used in smaller proportion still.
Styles it is characteristic of
Cidre brut
The dry tier of the French cider scale, defined since 2025 by a density no greater than 1.016 with an acquired strength of at least 3.5% vol — correspondingly more of the juice’s sugar converted to alcohol.
Cidre de Bretagne
Protected Breton cider, built on a distinct western fruit inventory and generally drier, lighter and more acid-led than its Norman counterpart.
Cidre demi-sec
The middle tier of the French cider scale, sitting between doux and brut on density and forming the commercial centre of ground for much French cider.
Cidre fermier
Farm-made French cider, pressed and fermented on the holding that grew the fruit, sold as an agricultural product of that farm rather than as a regional or industrial one.
Pommeau
A blend of fresh apple juice and apple brandy, mixed before fermentation so that the spirit prevents it, then aged in oak.
Where it grows
What people ask next
Questions readers ask about the things this page mentions. Each one goes to the section that answers it rather than to a page written to receive the question.
- How do you stop cider from fermenting — By removing the yeast, by chilling, by filtering it out, by pasteurising, or by a combination — and in practice a home maker cannot reliably stop a ferment mid-way with chemicals alone. Sorbate prevents yeast multiplying but will not stop an active ferment.
- What is keeving — Keeving is a technique for starving a ferment of nitrogen so that it stops before all the sugar is gone, leaving a naturally sweet cider. Pectin is made to gel and float as a brown cap, carrying nutrients and yeast out of the juice with it.
- What is keeved cider — A cider made naturally sweet by starving the yeast rather than by adding sugar. Keeving strips nutrients out of the juice before fermentation, so the ferment slows and stops with fruit sugar still in it, and nothing has been put back.
- What does sweating apples mean — Sweating is holding picked fruit in a heap or store for days or weeks before milling, so it softens, loses water and gains sugar concentration. Perry pears in particular are usually held until they yield to the thumb.
- What is maceration in cider making — Maceration is letting milled pomace stand before pressing, so that enzymes soften the tissue and phenolics and aroma move from the skins into the juice. It raises both colour and tannin, and raises the risk of oxidation with them.
- Why does cider smell of apple skin
Where to go next
- How cider apples are classified — Why there are four schemes and none of them is universal.
- The blend explorer — See which way changing the proportions moves a blend.
- Blending — What a cider maker is actually deciding when they build a blend.
Sources
What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.
Institut Français des Productions Cidricoles (IFPC)
IFPC · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
The French technical institute for cider production. The authority for the French cultivar classification families, for keeving as an industrial process, and for the pectin and nitrogen chemistry that keeving depends on.
Institut national de l’origine et de la qualité (INAO)
INAO · regulator · passage verified 2026-08-24
The Cidre Pays d’Auge cahier des charges was read in full on 2026-08-24, in the version homologated by arrêté of 17 January 2026 and published in the Journal officiel on 21 January. That qualification is not decoration. A revision adopted by the Comité national on 10 September 2025 is currently under the procédure nationale d’opposition, is clearly marked as not prejudging the final text, and specifies carbonation differently from the text in force — as grams of CO2 per litre rather than as a minimum pressure in bar. A summary citing the draft would have put a figure on the page that no producer is held to. CiderHQ records the operative text and says which one it is.
Research Evidence standard for this record. What that means.