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Comparison

Freeze concentration vs cryoextraction

What is the difference between cryoconcentration and cryoextraction in ice cider?

In short

Freeze concentration — often called cryoconcentration — presses the fruit in the ordinary way, then freezes the juice. Water crystallises out and the unfrozen fraction, which carries the sugar, acid and aroma, is drawn off.

Cryoextraction lets whole fruit freeze and presses it while frozen. The fruit may hang on the tree into winter or be picked in autumn and left outside to freeze; either way the ice stays behind in the pomace and only the concentrated fraction runs out. It requires a climate that delivers reliable hard frost, and fruit left on the tree accepts substantial losses to drop, birds and rot.

Both are recognised in Quebec, where the rules require natural cold for both, and the protected name requires all the fruit, for either method, to be pressed between 1 December and 1 March. The resulting products differ. Fruit that spends the early winter outdoors undergoes changes of its own — further ripening, some dehydration, a degree of oxidative development — which cryoextracted juice carries and freshly pressed frozen juice does not.

The two things being compared

Each side described in its own terms first, so the table below has something to hang on.

Where they differ

Dimension by dimension. Where a row needs a qualification, it carries one rather than being simplified until it fits.

Freeze concentration and Cryoextraction compared. Neither column is the baseline the other is measured against.
DimensionFreeze concentrationCryoextraction
When the fruit is pressedAt normal harvest, before freezing.In winter, while frozen.
Where the water is left behindAs ice in the freezing tank, which can be thawed and drained again to recover more sugar at a lower concentration.As ice in the pomace, where the sugar it traps is lost with the press cake.
Climate requiredThe Quebec specification excludes artificial cold for both methods, so under the protected name the two differ in what is frozen rather than in how.Anywhere juice can be frozen. Outside Quebec that may be a freezer; inside the protected name the juice must be frozen by the winter itself.Reliable sustained frost, since whole fruit has to freeze through before pressing.
Crop lossOrdinary harvest losses.Substantial, to drop, birds, rot and wind.
Changes in the fruitNone beyond ordinary storage.Months of hanging bring further ripening, dehydration and some oxidative change.
Control over concentrationPrecise; the fraction taken can be chosen.Determined by the conditions on the day of pressing.
Cultivar requirementAny.Cultivars that hold onto the tree into winter without dropping.

Notes under a dimension name qualify the whole row, not one column.

Why the first runnings are the sweetest

Both methods separate concentrate from ice, and both produce it in a gradient rather than at one strength. As a frozen block of juice thaws, or as frozen fruit is pressed, the liquid that runs first is the most concentrated, because the sugar-rich fraction has the lowest freezing point and is the last to have been locked into ice. The later runnings get progressively weaker until what drains is little sweeter than the original juice.

So the maker decides the concentration by deciding when to stop collecting, and every decision trades volume against strength. Taking the first fraction only gives a richer must and less of it; collecting further raises the volume and pulls the average down towards the 30 °Brix Quebec’s cider regulation requires before fermentation, or the 32 or so its protected name does. The ice cider page sets out the mass balance behind that trade.

The methods differ in what they can do about it afterwards. Ice in a tank can be drained again, or thawed partly and re-frozen, so freeze concentration can recover sugar left in the first pass. Ice in a press cake cannot: the sugar it holds leaves with the pomace, which is part of why cryoextraction yields less concentrate from the same fruit.

When Freeze concentration is the relevant one

The circumstances in which this is the thing being described, rather than a reason to prefer it.

When Cryoextraction is the relevant one

The circumstances in which this is the thing being described, rather than a reason to prefer it.

Related comparisons

Distinctions that turn on the same thing, or that this one is routinely confused with.

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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.