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Packaging and release checks

What should I check before a batch of cider is sold?

In short

Four things. Whether the pack can start fermenting again, which matters most for any cider with sugar left in it. How much oxygen went in at the filler, which decides how fast the cider will age. Whether the pack itself is sound: the fill, the carbonation, the seal or seam, the label and the lot code. And whether the cider in the pack still tastes as it should, judged by more than one person.

Keep retained samples from every lot and a record that ties each lot to its batch. They are what let a problem found months later be traced to one lot rather than to everything bottled that year.

Many of the published benchmarks are for wine. They are labelled as wine below, and they show what to measure rather than giving cider targets.

Refermentation is the first question

A cider with fermentable sugar left in it, back-sweetened or stopped early, is a cider that live yeast can restart. The AWRI notes that even a small number of cells in a bottle can referment it, leaving cloudiness, sediment and a yeasty character. In a sealed bottle the gas has nowhere to go, which is why this is the most serious of the release questions, not only a quality one.

A University of Vermont guide for commercial cider makers is plain about the controls. Back-sweetened ciders need pasteurising, or substantial sulphite and sorbate treatment, to avoid refermenting in the bottle, and sorbate alone will not stop a fermentation that is already going. A 1 micron polish filter cannot be relied on for sterile filtration, and filtered cider readily picks up organisms downstream of the filter.

Over-pressure is a safety matterThis page does not give pressure ratings for bottles or cans and does not say what a given pack can hold. A pack that has refermented can fail. The pressure topics say what the warning signs are and what to do.

Checking that it will not referment

The direct check is microbiological. In the sterility check the AWRI describes, a set volume of the packaged drink, typically 100 mL, is filtered through 0.45 µm membranes, and the membranes are incubated for around ten days and read at intervals. Small producers commonly send final packaged samples to a contract laboratory for this rather than running it themselves.

The indirect check is time. Packs from the lot held warm and watched for haze, sediment or rising pressure will show a refermentation before the trade does. This does not replace the microbiological check, because a slow refermentation may not show in the time the batch is held. It is evidence the batch is behaving, not proof that it is stable.

Oxygen at the filler

Total package oxygen is the oxygen dissolved in the drink at filling, plus the oxygen in the headspace when the closure goes on, plus the oxygen held in the closure itself. The AWRI states the principle for bottles, cans and bag-in-box alike. In the first months after packaging, headspace and closure oxygen are the main sources, and they are what use up the free sulphur dioxide.

A Virginia Tech enology guide puts the oxygen added by bottling at anywhere from 0.5 to more than 2 mg/L, and notes that oxygen is particularly harmful to drinks carrying potassium sorbate.

The AWRI’s total package oxygen benchmarks for wine. These are wine bands; no equivalent cider bands have been published that CiderHQ could find.
Total package oxygen (wine)AWRI assessment
Below 1.5 mg/LBest practice
1.5 to 2.5 mg/LAcceptable
Above 3 mg/LNeeds improvement
Above 4 mg/LPoor

The pack itself

Educational principles, not legal adviceThe two pieces of law above are cited for what they say, in their own jurisdictions: the US federal rule on fill tests and the EU directive on lot marks. What a cidery must do depends on where it is and what it sells. The labelling and food-safety topics cover more of the UK position.

Taste, retain, record

The same Virginia Tech guide says every bottling lot should be reviewed by a panel, not only by the winemaker. One person's palate has blind spots, and the person who made the cider is the one least able to taste it fresh. Two or three people tasting a pack against a retained sample of the previous lot is a panel in the sense that matters.

Keep retained samples, stored as the trade will store the cider. The canning guide recommends producers keep their own set to help identify problems later. A complaint months after release can only be judged against a sample from the same lot.

Then the record. The Vermont guide lists fruit sources, lot codes, production volumes and where the product went. The Virginia Tech guide describes wineries without lot coding having to recall every bottling date when one had a problem.

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