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Cider glossary

Cider carries vocabulary from five languages, four legal systems and three centuries, and a good deal of it is used loosely even by people who make the drink.

422 terms, across 15 subjects. Each definition is one or two sentences — enough to read a label, follow a producer or get through a technical page — and links on to the page that treats the subject properly where one exists.

Foreign terms keep their own language and are not translated into the nearest English word: brut is not French for dry, and sidra natural is not Spanish for farmhouse cider. Where a term means different things in different countries, the definition says so rather than picking the British sense.

Cider itself (46)

The categories, styles and general terms that describe the drink.

Apfelwein · German: German apple wine: cider fermented dry from culinary and wild apples, usually still or lightly sparkling, sharply acidic and served in the Frankfurt region as a regional speciality.
Apple wine: Cider fermented to a strength closer to table wine, usually 9% ABV or more, generally by adding sugar to the juice before fermentation.
Blend: A cider or perry made by combining juices or finished batches, either by mixing fruit before milling or by assembling separately fermented lots to a target balance.
Botanical: A herb, spice, flower, root or bark infused into cider for aroma and flavour. Historic recipes used them for preservation and for masking as much as for character.
Calvados · French: The protected apple — and in the Domfrontais, partly pear — brandy of Normandy, distilled from cider under appellation rules that govern the orchard, the fermentation, the still and the minimum cask age.
Cider: A fermented alcoholic drink made from the juice of apples. What may legally be sold under the name varies sharply between countries, so the word describes a family of drinks rather than a single specification.
Cider brandy: A spirit distilled from cider, aged in wood or sold unaged. Calvados is the protected French form; England, the United States and Spain each have their own traditions.
Cider from concentrate: Cider fermented from apple juice concentrate that has been reconstituted with water, rather than from juice pressed and fermented in the same season.
Cider house: A building or licensed premises where cider is made or sold. In the West Country it meant the farm’s making and storage building; in modern usage it usually means a bar specialising in cider.
Cider vinegar: Cider whose ethanol has been oxidised to acetic acid by acetic acid bacteria, producing a vinegar of about 5 per cent acidity. In a cider house the same process, unwanted, is a fault.
Cidre bouché · French: French cider sold in a heavy bottle closed with a mushroom cork and wire cage, sparkling from fermentation continuing in the bottle. Literally "corked cider".
Cidre fermier · French: French farm cider: made on the holding, from the holding’s own fruit, by the farmer. The term describes the production unit rather than a taste profile.
Concentrate: Apple juice from which most of the water has been removed, usually by vacuum evaporation, leaving a syrup of about 70 degrees Brix that is stable, transportable and reconstituted before use.
Craft cider: An unregulated marketing term implying small-scale production, whole-juice fermentation and stylistic intent. It has no agreed threshold in any jurisdiction.
Cyser: Apple juice fermented with a substantial addition of honey, sitting between cider and mead. The honey raises the starting gravity and contributes its own aromatics.
Draught cider: Cider dispensed from a cask, keg or box rather than from a bottle or can. In British usage it also implies a serving format eligible for the reduced draught rate of alcohol duty.
Dry: A cider or perry with little or no residual sugar, in which fermentation has taken the sugars essentially to completion.
Ebbelwoi · Hessian German: The Hessian dialect name for Apfelwein, used in and around Frankfurt where the drink is a civic institution. Stöffche, "the little stuff", is an affectionate local synonym. Apfelwein →
Farmhouse cider: Cider made on the farm that grew the fruit, traditionally in small volumes for the farm’s own use and local sale, and by extension any cider made in that manner.
Fruit cider: Cider to which other fruit, fruit juice or fruit flavouring has been added, before or after fermentation. The base must still be cider for the name to apply.
Graff: A hybrid drink fermented from apple juice with malted barley wort or malt extract, giving a cider with a grain backbone. It is a modern North American category rather than a historic one. Graff →
Hard cider: The North American term for fermented, alcoholic apple juice, used because the unqualified word "cider" means the unfermented pressing there.
Hopped cider: Cider dosed with hops, usually after fermentation and usually for aroma rather than bitterness, so that the hop’s oils sit over the apple.
Ice cider: A sweet, concentrated cider made by freezing — either of the juice before fermentation, or of the fruit on the tree — so that water is removed as ice and the remaining juice ferments to a high-sugar, high-acid dessert drink.
Low-alcohol cider: Cider at a strength below the threshold at which a jurisdiction treats a drink as fully alcoholic, made either by arresting fermentation early, by diluting, or by removing alcohol from a finished cider.
Medium: A cider between dry and sweet, carrying enough residual sugar to be noticeable without dominating. British retail practice uses it as the middle of a three-step scale. Medium cider →
Most · German: In German-speaking Europe, either fresh fruit juice or the fermented drink made from it. Which one it means is settled by the country you are standing in, and in Austria it is settled by statute.
Obstwein · German: In Austrian law, the umbrella term for every fermented fruit drink, pome fruit included. In German usage it is not a category at all — the German food code says Fruchtwein, and means only the non-pome ones.
Off-dry: A cider with a small amount of residual sugar — enough to soften acid and tannin but not enough to read as sweet. Competition vocabulary uses it for the step between dry and medium.
Pétillant · French: Lightly sparkling — enough dissolved gas to prickle on the tongue but well below the pressure of a fully sparkling cider, typically the result of a slow, incomplete secondary fermentation.
Pommeau · French: A blend of unfermented apple juice and apple brandy, matured in oak, sold at around 16 to 18% ABV as an aperitif or dessert drink.
Real cider: A campaigning definition, established by consumer organisations, for cider made from fresh-pressed juice without pasteurisation, carbonation, concentrate or extensive additions.
Sauermost · German: Fermented apple juice in Swiss and southern German usage — "sour must" — as opposed to the unfermented Süssmost. Typically dry, acidic and modest in strength.
Scrumpy: A West Country word for rough, strong, usually still and cloudy farm cider, sold with little processing and no attempt at clarity.
Sidra espumosa · Spanish: Spanish sparkling cider, made either by a second fermentation in bottle in the traditional method or by tank conditioning, and sold under pressure with a cork and cage.
Sidra natural · Spanish: Asturian and Basque cider fermented to complete dryness from pure juice, unfiltered, uncarbonated and bottled without added gas or sugar. It is poured from a height to raise a momentary foam.
Single varietal: A cider or perry made from one named cultivar, usually with a stated minimum proportion — commonly 90 or 100 per cent — rather than from a blend.
Sparkling: Carrying enough dissolved carbon dioxide to form a persistent bead and a distinct prickle, whether from bottle conditioning, tank conditioning or injected gas.
Spiced cider: Cider flavoured with spices such as cinnamon, clove or ginger. In North America the phrase also describes hot, unfermented spiced apple juice, which contains no alcohol at all. Spiced cider →
Still: Containing no perceptible dissolved carbon dioxide. Traditional farm cider and Spanish sidra natural are still in the glass, though the latter is aerated by the way it is poured.
Süssmost · German: Unfermented apple or pear juice, literally "sweet must". In Switzerland it is the standard term for the soft drink pressed from cider fruit.
Sweet cider: In Britain and Europe, a cider at the sweet end of the sweetness scale, with enough residual or added sugar to taste distinctly sweet. In North America, the same phrase means fresh unfermented apple juice, usually unfiltered.
Viez · German: The cider of the Moselle and the Saar, fermented dry from local apples and drunk young, usually still and often from a handled half-litre pot called a Porz.
Vintage: A cider or perry made wholly from the fruit of one stated harvest year, as distinct from a blend across seasons.
White cider: A pale, high-strength, low-juice British product made largely from concentrate, apple pomace extract and added sugar, then decolourised by carbon or filtration.
Zider · German: A defined Austrian category: fruit juice blended with fruit wine of the same fruit group, to 5 % vol and 2.5 bar. Austria has a statutory definition of cider; Germany, until 2026, had none at all.

Perry (17)

Perry has its own vocabulary, and several of its words have no cider equivalent.

Birnenmost · German: Pear must, and by extension the fermented pear drink of Austria, Switzerland and southern Germany — the central European equivalent of perry.
Champagne perry: A nineteenth and twentieth-century trade name for sparkling bottled perry sold as a substitute for sparkling wine, made by bottle or tank fermentation and sometimes by carbonation.
Choke pear: An old English name for a pear so astringent that it is inedible raw — a description of most perry pears, and the origin of the phrase used figuratively for anything hard to swallow.
Huffcap: A traditional name element attached to a group of perry pears — Hendre Huffcap, Red Huffcap, Black Huffcap among them — and, older still, a word for a drink strong enough to lift the cap off the drinker’s head.
Mostbirne · German: A pear cultivar grown for must rather than for eating in Austria, Switzerland and southern Germany — the central European counterpart of a perry pear.
Pear cider: A trade name used from the 2000s for pear-flavoured drinks and for pear ferments made from dessert pear juice or concentrate, distinct from perry made with perry pears.
Pear must: Freshly pressed, unfermented pear juice destined for perry. It differs from apple must in its sorbitol content, its citric acid fraction and its lower assimilable nitrogen.
Perry: A fermented alcoholic drink made from the juice of pears, and specifically from perry pears rather than dessert pears. It is not cider made with pears added: it is a separate drink with its own fruit, chemistry and problems.
Perry pear: A pear cultivar grown for fermentation rather than for eating, characterised by high tannin, high acid or both, small size, and flesh too hard and astringent for the table.
Perry pear classification: The four-class scheme — sweet, medium sharp, bittersweet and bittersharp — used to group perry pears by acid and tannin, in the same logic as the Long Ashton classification of cider apples.
Perry pear conservation: The organised work of finding, identifying, propagating and replanting surviving perry pear cultivars, most of which exist as a handful of ageing trees.
Poiré · French: French perry: pear juice fermented, in the Domfrontais made largely from local perry pears, keeved and bottled to finish sparkling and off-dry.
Poiré Domfront · French: The protected appellation for perry from the Domfrontais in Normandy, requiring a high minimum proportion of local perry pear cultivars, keeving, and bottle carbonation without added gas. Poiré Domfront →
Pyrus communis · Latin: The European pear, the species to which almost all perry pears and dessert pears belong. Perry cultivars are selections within it, not a separate species.
Pyrus nivalis · Latin: The snow pear, a species with felted grey foliage used for perry and pear must in Austria and central Europe, and occasionally crossed into perry pear populations further west.
Sparkling perry: Perry carrying dissolved carbon dioxide, whether from a bottle or tank conditioning, from an incomplete keeved ferment, or from injected gas. Sparkling perry →
Stone cells: Clusters of thick-walled lignified cells in pear flesh that give it its gritty texture. They blunt mills, complicate pressing and contribute to the sediment a perry throws.

The fruit (24)

Classes, characteristics and the language used about cider apples and perry pears.

Bittersharp: In the Long Ashton classification, a cider apple high in both acid and tannin — conventionally above about 0.45 per cent acid and 0.2 per cent tannin. The smallest of the four classes and the most self-sufficient.
Bittersweet: In the Long Ashton classification, a cider apple low in acid — conventionally below about 0.45 per cent — and high in tannin, above about 0.2 per cent. Bittersweets form the structural base of West Country cider.
Bletting: The softening and internal browning of fruit after ripening, in which cell walls break down, starch and tannin change, and flesh becomes soft and sweet. Perry pears in particular are often used at or near this stage.
Brown rot: A fungal rot of apples and pears, chiefly Monilinia fructigena, producing an expanding brown lesion with concentric rings of buff spore pustules. Affected fruit is unfit for milling.
Chats: Small, undersized apples, traditionally either discarded or milled with the rest of the crop. The word survives in West Country orchard usage.
Cider apple: An apple cultivar selected for fermentation rather than for eating or cooking, valued for juice yield, sugar, tannin and acid rather than for texture or appearance.
Crab apple: A small, hard, very acidic and often astringent apple, whether a wild species or a small-fruited cultivar. Crabs are used as orchard pollinators, occasionally as a source of acid and tannin, and traditionally for verjuice.
Culinary apple: An apple grown for cooking, typically large, high in acid and low in tannin. Culinary fruit is used in cider chiefly to raise acidity and lower pH in a blend dominated by low-acid apples.
Cultivar: A named clone propagated by grafting, so that every tree of it is genetically identical to the original seedling. "Variety" is used interchangeably in trade, though it has a stricter botanical meaning.
Dessert apple: An apple grown to be eaten fresh. In cider terms, dessert fruit contributes sugar, acid and aroma but almost no tannin, so ciders made from it are light and need blending or process character for structure.
Douce-amère · French: The bittersweet class in the French cider apple classification: low acid with substantial tannin, forming the core of a Normandy or Breton blend.
Heritage variety: An old cultivar surviving outside mainstream commercial propagation, kept going by collections, enthusiasts and old orchards. The term implies age and rarity, not quality.
Keeping quality: How long harvested fruit stays sound before it must be milled. Good keepers can be held for weeks and let a mill spread its pressing; poor keepers must be pressed within days of collection.
Malus domestica · Latin: The cultivated apple, the species to which all cider apple cultivars belong. It is a hybrid complex rather than a clean wild species, which is why its botanical name has repeatedly been revised.
Malus sieversii · Latin: The wild apple of the Tien Shan mountains of central Asia, established by genetic evidence as the principal ancestor of the domesticated apple.
Ripeness: The stage at which fruit has completed starch conversion, reached its characteristic sugar and softened enough to press. For cider fruit it is judged later than for dessert fruit, often at or after natural drop.
Sharp: In the Long Ashton classification, a cider apple high in acid and low in tannin. Sharps supply freshness and lower the pH of a blend into a range where spoilage organisms are less comfortable.
Speierling · German: The true service tree, Sorbus domestica — a tree, not an apple and not a rowan. Its small astringent fruit is added in small quantity to Hessian Apfelwein, and on a German label the word is now a flavour indication rather than a statement that the fruit is in the bottle.
Sport: A shoot that differs genetically from the rest of the tree through a somatic mutation, and which can be propagated as a new cultivar. Many red-skinned strains of familiar apples arose this way.
Starch-iodine test: A field test for ripeness in which a cut apple is stained with iodine solution: starch turns blue-black, so the extent of the unstained area shows how far starch has converted to sugar.
Sweating: Holding harvested fruit in a heap or a shed for days or weeks before milling, so that starch converts to sugar, flesh softens and moisture is lost.
Sweet: In the Long Ashton classification, a cider apple low in both acid and tannin. Sweet fruit contributes sugar, alcohol and volume but little structure, and makes a bland cider on its own.
Vintage quality: A traditional West Country designation for a cider apple capable of making a balanced, complete cider on its own, without blending. It is a judgement about the fruit, not a statement about a harvest year.
Wilding: A tree grown from a chance seedling rather than grafted from a known cultivar, and the fruit it bears. Wildings supplied much of the fruit in old hedgerow and farm orchards.

Orchard and growing (40)

Trees, rootstocks, orchard forms and the growing year.

Agroforestry: Growing trees and agricultural crops or livestock together on the same ground. A grazed standard orchard is one of the oldest European examples, combining fruit, timber and pasture on one field.
Biennial bearing: The habit of cropping heavily one year and lightly or not at all the next. It is marked in several major cider cultivars and shapes the whole economics of a mill’s supply.
Bush: A small tree on a dwarfing or semi-dwarfing rootstock with a short stem, planted at high density and cropping within a few years of planting. Most cider fruit grown commercially since the mid twentieth century comes from bush orchards.
Canker: A fungal disease, caused by Neonectria ditissima, that forms sunken, cracked lesions on branches and trunks, girdling and killing the wood beyond them.
Chip budding: A grafting method in which a single bud with a chip of wood behind it is fitted into a matching cut on the rootstock, usually in late summer while the bark is still active.
Cordon: A tree trained as a single stem, usually at an angle against wires or a wall, with fruiting spurs held close to that stem. Used for very high density planting and for trials rather than for commercial cider fruit.
Diploid: A cultivar with the normal two sets of chromosomes, producing viable pollen. Most apple and pear cultivars are diploid, and an orchard’s pollination planning is built around them.
Fireblight: A bacterial disease of apples and especially pears that blackens blossom and shoots as though scorched, killing branches rapidly and sometimes whole trees.
Flowering: The blossom period, when the crop is set or lost. Cider cultivars flower over several weeks in spring, and the sequence is consistent enough between cultivars to be used for planning even though the dates move each year.
Frost pocket: A hollow or an enclosed low-lying site where cold air collects on still nights, giving temperatures several degrees below the surrounding slope and a much higher risk of blossom frost.
Fruit sorting: Removing rotten, mouldy and foreign material from harvested fruit before milling, by hand on a table or by flotation and mechanical inspection at scale.
Graft: The joining of a scion to a rootstock so that their cambium layers unite and grow as one tree. It is the only reliable way to reproduce an apple or pear cultivar.
Grubbing up: Removing an orchard by pulling out the trees and their roots. In Britain and much of Europe it was carried out at scale in the later twentieth century, in places with public grant support.
Half-standard: A tree with a clear stem of roughly 1.2 to 1.5 metres — lower than a standard, higher than a bush — allowing limited grazing while keeping the canopy within reach.
June drop: The natural shedding of a proportion of set fruitlets in early summer, by which a tree reduces a crop it cannot carry. It is normal and self-correcting, not a disorder.
M25: A vigorous apple rootstock producing a full standard tree, self-supporting and long-lived. It is the usual modern choice where a traditional standard orchard is being planted or replanted.
M9: A dwarfing apple rootstock from the Malling series, producing a small, early-bearing tree that requires permanent staking and good soil moisture. Standard for intensive dessert orchards and used for some intensive cider planting.
Mistletoe: A hemiparasitic plant, Viscum album, that grows on apple branches, drawing water and minerals from the host while photosynthesising for itself. Traditional orchards are its most important habitat in Britain.
MM106: A semi-dwarfing apple rootstock bred for woolly aphid resistance, giving a self-supporting half-standard or large bush. It has been the workhorse of twentieth-century cider bush orchards.
Noble chafer: A rare metallic-green beetle, Gnorimus nobilis, whose larvae develop in the decaying heartwood of old fruit trees. It is used as an indicator species for high-quality traditional orchard habitat.
Orchard floor: The ground layer beneath the trees, and its management: permanent grazed grassland in traditional orchards, mown alleys with herbicide strips in intensive ones.
Orchard renewal: Replacing failing or unproductive trees, either individually within a standing orchard or by clearing and replanting a block. Renewal planning is what keeps an orchard in production across generations.
Pollination group: A numbered band grouping cultivars by the timing of their blossom, so that a grower can plant varieties that flower together and can therefore pollinate one another.
Pollinator: A cultivar planted to supply compatible pollen to the cropping variety, or — in the other sense of the word — the insect that carries it. Crab apples are often used as pollen sources because they flower long and heavily.
Pruning: The removal of wood to shape a tree, control its size, admit light to the fruiting zone and renew bearing wood. Formative pruning builds the framework; renewal pruning maintains it.
Quince rootstock: A dwarfing rootstock used for pears, giving a smaller and earlier-bearing tree than a pear seedling stock. Many perry pear cultivars are incompatible with it and require an interstem or a pear stock.
Rootstock: The root system onto which a fruiting cultivar is grafted. It governs the tree’s eventual size, its speed into bearing, its anchorage and its tolerance of soil conditions, without changing the fruit itself.
Scab: A fungal disease, caused by Venturia inaequalis, producing olive-brown blotches on leaves and corky, cracked lesions on fruit. It reduces yield, disfigures fruit and opens the way for rots.
Scion: A length of dormant one-year-old shoot from the cultivar to be propagated, joined to a rootstock so that it becomes the fruiting part of the tree.
Seedling rootstock: A rootstock grown from seed rather than from a clonal stool bed. Vigorous and variable, it was the standard basis of traditional orchards before the Malling series was selected.
Self-incompatible: Unable to set a useful crop from its own pollen. Almost all apples and pears are self-incompatible, so an orchard needs at least two cultivars flowering together.
Spur bearer: A cultivar that carries most of its fruit on short, slow-growing shoots — spurs — on two-year-old and older wood. Spur bearers tolerate the routine winter shortening of shoots that pruning involves.
Standard: A tree grown on a vigorous rootstock with a clear trunk of about 1.8 to 2.1 metres before the first branch, forming a large canopy that can be grazed or mown beneath.
Tip bearer: A cultivar that fruits mainly at the ends of the previous season’s shoots. Pruning a tip bearer as though it were a spur bearer removes the fruit buds and the following crop with them.
Top working: Regrafting an established tree to a different cultivar by cutting back its main branches and grafting scions onto the stubs, keeping the existing root system and framework.
Traditional orchard: An orchard of widely spaced standard or half-standard trees on vigorous rootstocks, with a permanent grassland floor that is grazed or mown. In the United Kingdom it is a recognised priority habitat.
Triploid: A cultivar carrying three sets of chromosomes rather than two. Triploids are vigorous and often heavy croppers but produce sterile or near-sterile pollen, so they cannot pollinate anything and need two other cultivars in the orchard.
Veteran tree: An old tree carrying the features that come with age — hollowing trunk, decaying heartwood, dead limbs, loose bark and cavities — which together make it habitat for species that live nowhere else in the orchard.
Whip and tongue: A bench grafting method in which matching sloping cuts, each with an interlocking tongue, hold scion and rootstock together while the union forms. Performed in late winter on dormant wood.
Windfall: Fruit that has fallen from the tree before deliberate harvest. In cider orchards windfalls are a normal part of the crop; the question is how long they have lain and in what condition.

Milling and pressing (17)

Getting the juice out of the fruit, and the equipment-neutral terms for what happens.

Cheese: The stack of pomace built up in a traditional press: alternating layers of pomace wrapped in cloth, or bound with straw, forming a squat block that juice runs out of under pressure.
Ciderkin: A weak drink made by soaking pressed pomace in water and pressing it again, historically supplied to farm workers and to households as an everyday beverage of low strength.
Flotation: Moving and washing fruit in a channel of water on its way to the mill. Apples float, while stones, soil and much rotten fruit sink, so the flume cleans and sorts at the same time.
Free-run juice: Juice that drains from the pomace under its own weight before pressure is applied. It is cleaner and less phenolic than the juice recovered at high pressure at the end of a press.
Hair: A coarse cloth of horsehair, and later of woven synthetic fibre, used to wrap pomace in a press. The word survives as the trade name for press cloths regardless of what they are now made from.
Maceration: Holding milled pomace before pressing so that enzymes soften it and phenolic and aromatic material moves from the skins into the juice. Times range from an hour to a full day.
Marc · French: French for pressed pomace, and by extension the spirit distilled from it. Marc de cidre and marc de pomme are pomace brandies distinct from Calvados, which is distilled from cider itself.
Milling: Breaking fruit down into pomace so that its cells rupture and its juice can be pressed out. It is the step that determines pressing yield more than any other.
Must: Freshly pressed, unfermented juice, from the moment it leaves the press until fermentation begins. The word is borrowed from wine-making and shares a root with German Most.
Pomace: Milled fruit — flesh, skin, pips and stalk fragments — before pressing, and the spent solids left in the press afterwards. Both senses are in everyday use and context distinguishes them.
Pounding: The old West Country word for milling fruit, from the days when apples were beaten or ground to pulp rather than torn by a scratter. It survives in the name of the building where it happened, the pound house.
Press cloth: The woven sheet in which a layer of pomace is folded before pressing. Mesh size trades juice clarity against pressing speed, and cleanliness of cloths is a principal control on spoilage organisms in the press house.
Pressing yield: The proportion of fruit weight recovered as juice, usually expressed as litres per tonne or as a percentage. It depends on the fruit, the mill setting, the press type and the pressure profile.
Rack and cloth: The standard traditional pressing method: pomace is wrapped in a square cloth to form a parcel, a slatted rack is laid on top, and the layers are stacked into a cheese and pressed.
Sanitation: The routine cleaning and disinfection of everything juice touches. In a cider house it is the single most effective control on spoilage, and it is separated into cleaning, which removes soil, and sanitising, which reduces the organisms left behind.
Scratter: A mill that tears apples apart between a rotating toothed or studded drum and a fixed plate, producing the coarse pomace that a press can work with.
Second pressing: Breaking up pressed pomace, wetting it with water, and pressing again to recover the sugar and extract left behind. The product is weak and is used for low-strength drinks or for blending, not sold as full-juice cider.

Fermentation and cellar work (44)

What happens between the press and the bottle.

Airlock: A water-sealed valve fitted to a fermenting vessel that lets carbon dioxide escape while preventing air, insects and airborne organisms from entering.
Arrested fermentation: Deliberately stopping a fermentation before the sugar is exhausted, in order to retain natural sweetness. Achieved by repeated racking, chilling, filtration, sulphite, or a combination.
Attenuation: The proportion of the original sugar that fermentation has consumed, calculated from the fall in gravity from the starting to the current reading and expressed as a percentage.
Back-sweetening: Adding sugar, juice or concentrate to a fully fermented cider to reach a target sweetness. Because the added sugar is fermentable, the cider must then be stabilised or kept cold.
Barrel ageing: Maturing cider in wood, either in neutral casks used purely as vessels or in barrels chosen to contribute oak, spirit or wine character.
Bâtonnage · French: Stirring the fine lees back into suspension during maturation to accelerate autolysis and its contribution to texture.
Bench blending: Making small measured trial blends of finished batches and tasting them before committing the tanks, so that proportions are chosen on evidence rather than arithmetic alone.
Bottle conditioning: Carbonating cider by fermentation inside the sealed bottle, either from primed sugar or from sugar left over from an incomplete ferment. The yeast deposit remains unless the bottle is disgorged. Bottle conditioning →
Centrifugation: Clarifying juice or cider by spinning it so that denser solids are thrown outward and removed continuously. Faster than settling and used at scale in place of, or before, filtration. Centrifugation →
Chapeau brun · French: The brown gelatinous cap of pectate, solids and yeast that floats to the surface during keeving. Its formation is the visible test that keeving has worked.
Chaptalisation: Adding sugar to juice before fermentation to raise the eventual alcohol. It increases strength without changing acid or tannin, so a heavily chaptalised cider can taste thin for its strength.
Cold stabilisation: Chilling cider close to freezing for a period so that unstable material — potassium salts, protein-tannin complexes and colloids — precipitates in the tank rather than in the bottle. Cold stabilisation →
Défécation · French: The French name for keeving, from the Latin for removing the dregs. It describes the same pectate-gel clarification and the same nutrient stripping that keeving does.
Disgorging: Expelling the frozen plug of yeast sediment from the neck of a bottle-fermented cider, so that the finished drink is clear. The bottle is immediately topped up and closed.
Dosage · French: The measured liquid — cider, juice, or a sugar solution — added after disgorging to replace what was expelled and to set the final sweetness of a sparkling cider.
Fermentation: The conversion of sugar to ethanol and carbon dioxide by yeast, together with the many secondary reactions that occur alongside it and which supply most of a cider’s aroma.
Filtration: Passing cider through a porous medium to remove suspended solids, yeast and haze. Coarse filtration polishes appearance; fine filtration approaches microbiological stability.
Fining: Adding an agent that binds haze-forming material and drags it out of suspension, so that the cider clears without filtration. Bentonite, gelatine, isinglass, chitosan and silica sol are common.
Forced carbonation: Dissolving carbon dioxide into finished cider under pressure, in tank or in line, rather than generating it by fermentation.
Gyle: A single batch of fermenting liquid, and by extension the batch number identifying it. Borrowed from brewing, it is used in larger cider houses as the unit of traceability from tank to pack.
Inoculation: Adding a selected yeast culture to the juice to conduct the fermentation, usually after rehydrating dried yeast or building a starter.
Keeving: A pre-fermentation clarification in which pectin in the juice is gelled into a floating brown cap, taking nutrients and yeast with it, so that the clear juice drawn from beneath ferments slowly and stops with sugar remaining.
Lees: The deposit that settles under a fermenting or maturing cider: dead and living yeast, fruit solids, pectin, tartrate and protein. Gross lees are the coarse first deposit; fine lees are the finer yeast layer that forms afterwards.
Malolactic fermentation: The bacterial conversion of malic acid into lactic acid and carbon dioxide, which lowers total acidity, raises pH slightly and softens the drink. It is a bacterial process, not a yeast fermentation.
Maturation: The period after fermentation in which a cider settles, clarifies and changes chemically — esters forming and hydrolysing, phenolics polymerising, harsh notes integrating — before it is packaged or drunk.
Pasteurisation: Heating cider to destroy yeast and bacteria, either by flash pasteurisation before filling or by tunnel pasteurisation in the sealed container. It stabilises a sweetened product against refermentation.
Pied de cuve · French: A starter made from the must itself: a small parcel of juice allowed to begin fermenting spontaneously, then added to the main tank to give the native population a head start.
Primary fermentation: The vigorous first phase in which the bulk of the sugar is fermented, usually over one to several weeks, marked by visible gas evolution and a rapidly falling gravity.
Priming: Adding a measured quantity of fermentable sugar at bottling or kegging so that a residual yeast population produces carbon dioxide in the sealed container.
Racking: Transferring cider off its sediment into a clean vessel, leaving the lees behind. It is the basic maintenance operation of the cellar and the traditional method of slowing a fermentation.
Riddling: Gradually tilting and turning bottles so that the yeast deposit slides into the neck ready for disgorging. Done by hand on a rack or mechanically in a gyropalette. Riddling racks, freezing baths and the disgorging bench →
Secondary fermentation: Any fermentation after the primary: the slow finishing of residual sugar, a deliberate refermentation in bottle or tank for carbonation, or a malolactic conversion by bacteria.
Sterile filtration: Filtration through a membrane fine enough — conventionally 0.45 micron — to remove yeast and most bacteria, allowing a sweetened cider to be packaged without refermenting. Sterile filtration →
Stuck fermentation: A fermentation that has halted before the sugar is used up and will not restart on its own. It is distinct from a deliberately arrested ferment and from a merely sluggish one.
Sulphiting: Adding sulphur dioxide, usually as potassium or sodium metabisulphite, to juice or cider to suppress spoilage organisms, inhibit oxidation and enzymatic browning, and give a selected yeast a clear field.
Sur lie · French: Maturing cider in contact with its fine lees rather than racking clear, so that yeast autolysis contributes body, texture and savoury character. Literally "on the lees".
Topping up: Refilling a maturing vessel with similar cider to eliminate the headspace, so that no air surface remains for oxidative and acetic spoilage. Topping up →
Traditional method: Sparkling production in which a base cider is bottled with sugar and yeast, refermented under crown or cork, matured on its lees, then riddled, disgorged and topped up with a dosage before final closure.
Transfer method: A sparkling method in which cider is refermented in bottle but is then emptied under pressure into a tank, filtered and rebottled, avoiding riddling and disgorging. Transfer method →
Ullage: The empty space between the surface of the cider and the top of its container, and by extension the volume lost that creates it. Ullage in a maturing cask is where oxidation and acetification start.
Unfiltered: Packaged without filtration, so the cider retains yeast and colloidal material and is usually hazy. It is a process statement rather than a quality claim, and unfiltered ciders throw a sediment.
Wild fermentation: Fermentation by the yeasts already present on the fruit and in the press house, without a cultured inoculation.
Yeast nutrient: Nitrogen and micronutrients added to a must that cannot supply the yeast’s needs. Diammonium phosphate provides inorganic nitrogen; complex nutrients also supply amino acids, vitamins and sterols.
Yeast starter: A small volume of juice fermented in advance to build an active, acclimatised yeast population before it is added to the main batch.

Chemistry (48)

Acids, sugars, tannins and the measurements applied to them.

Acetaldehyde: A volatile carbonyl formed as an intermediate in fermentation and by the oxidation of ethanol. In small amounts it lifts fruit character; in excess it smells of bruised apple, sherry and cheap paint.
Acetic acid: The acid of vinegar, produced in cider by acetic acid bacteria oxidising ethanol and, in small amounts, by yeast during fermentation. It is the main constituent of volatile acidity. Acetic acid →
Acrolein: A pungent compound formed when certain lactic acid bacteria metabolise glycerol. Reacting with phenolics, it produces an intense and persistent bitterness known historically as amertume. Acrolein →
Bound sulphur dioxide: Sulphite that has combined with acetaldehyde, sugars, quinones and other carbonyl compounds. It counts towards the legal total but has no antimicrobial or antioxidant effect.
Brix: A scale expressing dissolved solids as grams of sucrose per hundred grams of solution. One degree Brix is approximately one per cent sugar by weight in juice.
Buffering capacity: The resistance of a juice or cider to a change in pH when acid or alkali is added, arising from its weak acids and their salts — chiefly malate and potassium.
Calcium pectate: The insoluble gel formed when calcium ions cross-link de-methylated pectin. It is the substance of the keeving cap, and the reason calcium salts are sometimes added to encourage one. Calcium pectate →
Campden tablet: A pressed tablet of sodium or potassium metabisulphite supplying a standard small dose of sulphur dioxide, sized for domestic and small-scale batches.
Carbon dioxide: The gas produced alongside ethanol in fermentation, and the gas that makes a cider sparkle. Its solubility falls as temperature rises, which is why a warm bottle foams.
Chlorogenic acid: The most abundant hydroxycinnamic acid in apple juice, and the principal substrate for enzymatic browning. It is also a precursor of the ethylphenols that Brettanomyces produces.
Citric acid: A minor acid in apples but a significant one in pears, where it makes up a larger share of total acidity and behaves differently from malic acid under bacterial attack.
Dissolved oxygen: Oxygen carried in solution. Useful to yeast at the start of fermentation, and damaging afterwards, when it drives oxidation, acetification and the loss of aroma.
Esters: Compounds formed between an alcohol and an acid, produced in quantity by yeast during fermentation, and responsible for much of a cider’s fruity aroma.
Ethanol: The alcohol produced by fermentation and the compound that alcohol by volume measures. It contributes sweetness, warmth and body as well as intoxication.
Ethyl acetate: The ester of ethanol and acetic acid. At low concentration it reads as fruity and solvent-like; at higher concentration it is the nail-varnish note that accompanies acetic spoilage.
Fermentable sugars: The sugars yeast can consume — in apple juice principally fructose, with glucose and sucrose in smaller proportion. Fructose usually dominates, which is unusual among fermentable fruit juices.
Free sulphur dioxide: The portion of added sulphite still in equilibrium in solution as molecular SO₂, bisulphite and sulphite ions, and therefore still available to protect the cider.
Glycerol: A three-carbon polyol produced by yeast during fermentation, chiefly early on as it balances its internal redox state. It contributes slight sweetness and a sense of viscosity.
Higher alcohols: Alcohols larger than ethanol, formed by yeast from amino acids. In moderation they add complexity and a warm, slightly solvent note; in excess they read as harsh and heady.
Hydrogen sulphide: A volatile sulphur compound produced by stressed yeast, smelling of rotten eggs at very low concentrations. In cider it is usually a symptom of nitrogen deficiency during fermentation.
Klosterneuburger Mostwaage · German: The Austrian must-weight scale, defined in Austrian wine law as one seventeenth of the mass content of a twenty per cent aqueous sucrose solution. One degree is about ten grams of sugar per kilogram of must.
Lactic acid: A softer, milder acid produced from malic acid by lactic acid bacteria, and in smaller quantities by yeast. Its arrival is what makes a malolactic cider taste rounder. Lactic acid →
Malic acid: The dominant acid of apples and pears, giving the sharp, clean acidity of fresh juice. Its name comes from malum, the Latin for apple.
Mean degree of polymerisation: The average number of monomer units in the procyanidin chains of a sample. It is the analytical figure that predicts whether a fruit’s tannin will read as bitter or as astringent.
Methanol: A toxic alcohol produced in small amounts when pectin is de-methylated, so that cider naturally contains a trace of it. Levels in cider are far below any toxic threshold.
Molecular sulphur dioxide: The undissociated fraction of free sulphur dioxide, and the only form that is antimicrobial. Its share of the free sulphite is governed by pH and falls sharply as pH rises.
Oechsle: A German must-weight scale: the number of grams by which a litre of juice exceeds the weight of a litre of water. A juice at 1.050 specific gravity reads 50 degrees Oechsle.
Oligomer: A molecule built from a small number of repeating units. Oligomeric procyanidins — roughly two to about ten flavan-3-ol units — are the fraction of cider tannin perceived mainly as bitterness.
Patulin: A mycotoxin produced chiefly by Penicillium expansum in rotting apples, regulated in apple juice and apple products because of its toxicity. Sorting out rotten fruit is the principal control.
Pectic enzyme: A commercial enzyme preparation, usually fungal, that depolymerises pectin so that juice clarifies, presses more freely and yields more.
Pectin: A structural polysaccharide of fruit cell walls, released into juice during milling and pressing. It thickens juice, holds haze in suspension and is the raw material of the keeving cap.
Pectin methylesterase: The native fruit enzyme that removes methyl groups from pectin, exposing the carboxyl groups that then bind calcium. It is the enzyme on which keeving depends.
pH: A logarithmic measure of hydrogen ion activity, and in cider the single most important number for microbial safety. Apple juice usually falls between pH 3.2 and 3.9.
Polymer: A molecule built from many repeating units. Polymeric procyanidins, long chains of flavan-3-ols, bind salivary proteins efficiently and are the fraction of cider tannin perceived as astringency rather than bitterness.
Polyphenol: The broad class of plant compounds carrying multiple phenol rings. In apples this includes procyanidins, hydroxycinnamic acids such as chlorogenic acid, flavonols, dihydrochalcones such as phloridzin, and anthocyanins in red-fleshed fruit.
Polyphenol oxidase: The enzyme, released when fruit cells are broken, that oxidises phenolics to quinones in the presence of oxygen. It is the cause of the browning of cut apples and of milled pomace.
Potential alcohol: The alcoholic strength a juice would reach if all its fermentable sugar were converted, estimated from the starting gravity.
Procyanidin: A chain of flavan-3-ol units — mainly epicatechin, with catechin as a terminal unit — and the principal tannin of cider apples. Chain length determines whether it tastes bitter or astringent.
Residual sugar: The fermentable sugar remaining in a finished cider, usually expressed in grams per litre. It is what sweetness legislation and style bands are written against.
Sorbate: A preservative that prevents yeast from multiplying, used with sulphite to stabilise a back-sweetened cider against refermentation. It does not kill an active population.
Sorbitol: A sugar alcohol present in substantial quantity in pears and in smaller amounts in apples. Yeast does not ferment it, so it survives fermentation and leaves a fully dry perry tasting faintly sweet.
Specific gravity: The density of a liquid relative to water at the same temperature. In cider it is the routine measure of dissolved sugar before fermentation and of progress during it.
Sulphur dioxide: The antimicrobial and antioxidant additive of cider and wine-making, added as a metabisulphite salt or as gas. In solution it exists as molecular SO₂, bisulphite and sulphite, in proportions set by pH.
Tannin: In cider usage, the phenolic material responsible for bitterness and astringency, principally condensed tannins — procyanidins — built from catechin and epicatechin units.
Titratable acidity: The total concentration of titratable acid in a juice or cider, measured by neutralising a sample with alkali to an end point and expressed as an equivalent of malic acid in grams per litre.
Total phenolics: The aggregate measure of phenolic material in a juice or cider, usually determined by a colorimetric method and expressed as an equivalent of a reference compound. It is what most historic "tannin" figures actually record.
Volatile acidity: The fraction of a cider’s acidity that can be distilled off — overwhelmingly acetic acid — measured separately from fixed acidity and used as an index of bacterial spoilage.
YAN: The nitrogen a yeast can actually use — free amino nitrogen plus ammonium — expressed in milligrams of nitrogen per litre. Apple juice is frequently short of it.

Microbiology (20)

The organisms that make cider, and the ones that spoil it.

Acetic acid bacteria: Aerobic bacteria — Acetobacter, Gluconobacter and Komagataeibacter — that oxidise ethanol to acetic acid. They require oxygen, which is why they colonise surfaces, ullage and slack fittings.
Apiculate yeast: Lemon-shaped, weakly fermenting yeasts — Hanseniaspora and its anamorph Kloeckera — that dominate the first days of a wild cider fermentation before alcohol suppresses them.
Autolysis: The self-digestion of dead yeast cells, which releases mannoproteins, amino acids and nucleotides into the cider. Controlled, it adds body and savoury complexity; uncontrolled, it gives meaty and sulphurous off-aromas.
Biofilm: A community of micro-organisms attached to a surface within a self-produced matrix, far more resistant to cleaning and to sanitisers than free-floating cells.
Brettanomyces: A genus of slow-growing yeasts, Dekkera in its sexual form, that survive in wood and in finished cider and produce volatile phenols smelling of farmyard, leather, spice and sticking plaster.
Flocculation: The clumping together of yeast cells into aggregates that settle out of suspension. Highly flocculent strains drop bright quickly; powdery strains stay suspended and are harder to clear.
Killer yeast: A yeast strain that secretes a protein toxin lethal to sensitive strains of the same or related species, giving it a competitive advantage in a mixed fermentation.
Lactic acid bacteria: The bacteria that convert malic acid to lactic acid and, in other conditions, produce the disorders of ropiness, mousiness and acrolein bitterness. Oenococcus, Lactiplantibacillus and Lactobacillus species dominate in cider.
Lactobacillus collinoides · Latin: A lactic acid bacterium characteristic of cider, implicated both in malolactic conversion and, through its metabolism of glycerol and sorbitol, in acrolein bitterness and in ropiness. Lactobacillus collinoides →
Microbial succession: The orderly replacement of one microbial population by another during fermentation, as rising alcohol, falling sugar, falling nutrient and falling oxygen change which organism can compete.
Non-Saccharomyces: A collective term for the yeasts other than Saccharomyces present in juice and early fermentation, including Hanseniaspora, Metschnikowia, Torulaspora and Pichia species.
Oenococcus oeni · Latin: The lactic acid bacterium most used and most wanted for malolactic conversion, tolerant of low pH and moderate alcohol and, in the right conditions, reliably clean in what it produces. Oenococcus oeni →
Penicillium expansum · Latin: The blue-green mould of stored and damaged apples, producing a soft watery rot and the mycotoxin patulin. It is the organism that makes rotten fruit a safety question. Penicillium expansum →
Saccharomyces cerevisiae · Latin: The principal fermenting yeast of cider, beer and wine, tolerant of alcohol and of sulphite and capable of taking a cider to dryness. Most commercial cider yeasts are strains of it.
Saccharomycodes ludwigii · Latin: A large, sulphite-tolerant spoilage yeast that ferments slowly, throws a coarse sediment and produces high acetaldehyde. It is a recurrent nuisance in sweetened and lightly treated ciders. Saccharomycodes ludwigii →
Sulphite tolerance: The capacity of a micro-organism to grow despite sulphur dioxide. It varies enormously — most acetic bacteria are sensitive, Zygosaccharomyces and Saccharomycodes are notably resistant — and determines what sulphiting actually selects for.
Vinegar fly: The small fly, chiefly Drosophila melanogaster, that breeds on fermenting fruit and carries acetic acid bacteria and spoilage yeasts on its body from pomace heap to open vessel.
Wild yeast: Yeast arriving with the fruit and resident in the press house and its equipment, as opposed to a pitched commercial culture. The term covers both useful and spoilage species.
Yeast: A single-celled fungus that ferments sugar to ethanol and carbon dioxide. Cider is fermented by a succession of yeast species, of which Saccharomyces cerevisiae usually finishes the job.
Zygosaccharomyces: A genus of osmotolerant, highly sulphite-resistant yeasts, chiefly Zygosaccharomyces bailii, which can referment sweetened cider and concentrate despite preservative doses that stop other yeasts.

Tasting and sensory terms (32)

The vocabulary used to describe what is in the glass, including where it is used loosely.

Acidity: The perception of sourness, and the sensation of freshness and mouth-watering it brings. It correlates with both titratable acidity and pH, but neither predicts it exactly.
Aroma threshold: The lowest concentration at which a compound can be detected in a given medium, usually defined as the level at which half a panel distinguishes it from a blank.
Astringency: A tactile sensation of drying, roughening and puckering in the mouth, caused by tannins binding and precipitating the proteins that lubricate the oral surfaces. It is a feeling, not a taste.
Balance: The relationship between a cider’s sweetness, acidity, tannin, alcohol and carbonation, judged by whether any one of them dominates unintentionally.
Bitterness: One of the basic tastes, detected by receptors chiefly on the posterior tongue. In cider it comes principally from short-chain procyanidins and from certain phenolic acids.
Blind tasting: Assessing a drink without knowing its identity, producer or price. Where the server also does not know, the tasting is double blind.
Body: The perceived weight and fullness of a cider in the mouth. Full-bodied ciders feel substantial and coating; thin ones feel watery regardless of their alcohol.
Brett character: The aroma complex produced by Brettanomyces: farmyard, horse blanket, leather, clove and sticking plaster, from 4-ethylphenol, 4-ethylguaiacol and related compounds.
Bruised apple: A descriptor for the soft, slightly oxidised apple note characteristic of acetaldehyde and of mild oxidation. Distinct from fresh-cut apple, which is bright and green. Bruised apple →
Complexity: The number of distinguishable characters a drink presents and the way they change over the course of tasting. It is descriptive: a simple cider is not thereby a poor one.
Descriptive analysis: A formal sensory method in which a trained panel rates the intensity of each of an agreed set of attributes, producing a quantitative profile that can be analysed statistically.
Farmyard: A descriptor for the animal, stable-like aroma associated chiefly with Brettanomyces ethylphenols, and sometimes loosely applied to any rustic character in traditional cider. Farmyard →
Finish: What remains after swallowing, and for how long. A long finish is a persistence of flavour and sensation; it is a description of duration, not automatically of quality.
Green: A descriptor for grassy, leafy, cut-stem aromas from six-carbon aldehydes such as hexanal and trans-2-hexenal, formed when fruit tissue is broken. Prominent in juice from under-ripe fruit.
Mousiness: A taint perceived only after swallowing, as a lingering flavour of mouse cage, stale popcorn or cracker, produced by tetrahydropyridines from lactic acid bacteria and Brettanomyces.
Mousse: The foam a sparkling cider forms when poured, and its persistence. Fine, long-lasting mousse is associated with bottle conditioning; coarse, quickly collapsing foam with injected gas.
Mouthfeel: The tactile impression of a drink in the mouth — viscosity, weight, texture, prickle and drying — as distinct from its taste and aroma.
Orthonasal olfaction: Smelling through the nostrils in the ordinary way, as when the glass is brought to the nose. It samples the headspace above the drink rather than the volatiles released in the mouth.
Oxidative: Showing the character that oxygen exposure brings — bruised apple, nuts, dried fruit, sherry and toffee — with fresh fruit aromas diminished. It may be a fault or a deliberate style.
Palate: In tasting usage, the whole in-mouth impression of a drink, and by extension a taster’s trained sensitivity. Anatomically it is the roof of the mouth, which does little of the tasting.
Pear drop: A descriptor for the confectionery-solvent aroma of isoamyl acetate and related esters. Common in fast, warm fermentations and in some yeast strains; not a marker of pear content. Pear drop →
Reductive: Showing sulphurous, struck-match, rubbery or drain-like character arising from a lack of oxygen during fermentation or lees ageing. The opposite condition to oxidative.
Retronasal olfaction: Smelling from within the mouth, as volatiles released by warming and chewing pass up behind the palate to the olfactory epithelium. Most of what people call taste is retronasal smell.
Sensory lexicon: An agreed, defined and reference-anchored vocabulary for describing a product category. A cider lexicon fixes what terms such as "cooked apple" or "barnyard" mean and what standard demonstrates each.
Stewed: A descriptor for cooked, compote-like apple character, arising from heat during processing, from prolonged storage at high temperature, or from juice concentrate. Cooked apple →
Sticking plaster: A descriptor for the sharp medicinal, antiseptic note of volatile phenols, most often from Brettanomyces and occasionally from chlorophenol contamination in packaging or premises. Sticking plaster →
Struck match: A descriptor for the sharp sulphurous note of sulphur dioxide or of reductive sulphur compounds, resembling a freshly struck match. Struck match →
Structure: The framework a cider’s acid and tannin give it — the sense of a shape holding the fruit up. Ciders without it are described as flabby or soft regardless of their flavour intensity.
Sweetness: The perception of sugar, and in perry of sorbitol. It is suppressed by acid, tannin and carbonation, so measured sugar and perceived sweetness diverge routinely.
Tasting note: A written description of a drink’s appearance, aroma, taste, mouthfeel and finish. Its usefulness depends entirely on whether its vocabulary is shared with the reader.
Trained panel: A group of assessors calibrated against reference standards to use an agreed vocabulary consistently, so that their scores measure the drink rather than their preferences.
Triangle test: A discrimination test in which an assessor receives three samples, two identical and one different, and must identify the odd one. It establishes whether a difference is perceptible at all.

Faults (26)

Names for things that have gone wrong, several of which are also names for things that have not.

Acetification: The oxidation of ethanol to acetic acid by acetic acid bacteria, turning cider progressively into vinegar. It requires oxygen and is the classic fault of a slack, part-empty cask.
Cider sickness: The historic name for a spoilage disorder of low-acid cider in which the drink turns turbid, loses colour, throws a deposit, produces gas and develops a milky, sometimes raspberry-like character.
Cork taint: A musty, damp-cardboard aroma caused chiefly by 2,4,6-trichloroanisole, formed when moulds methylate chlorophenols in cork, wood or premises. It suppresses fruit aroma even below the point of obvious mustiness. Cork taint →
Diacetyl: A compound produced by lactic acid bacteria from citrate and by yeast as a fermentation intermediate, smelling of butter, butterscotch or hot popcorn.
Enzymatic browning: The rapid darkening of cut fruit and fresh juice as polyphenol oxidase converts phenolics to quinones, which then polymerise into brown pigments.
Film yeast: Aerobic yeasts, chiefly Pichia and Candida species, that grow as a dull white or grey film on the surface of cider in a part-empty vessel, metabolising ethanol and acids.
Flat: Lacking both carbonation and freshness — a cider that has lost its gas and, usually with it, its aromatic lift and acidity. In a still cider the fault is the lifelessness, not the absence of bubbles. Flat and lifeless →
Framboise · French: A spoilage disorder in which lactic acid bacteria acting on phenolic compounds produce a strong raspberry-like aroma alongside a characteristic haze and loss of colour.
Geranium taint: A pungent aroma of crushed geranium leaf, produced when lactic acid bacteria metabolise sorbic acid. It occurs when sorbate is used without adequate sulphite. Geranium taint →
Gushing: The violent foaming of a cider on opening, so that a substantial part of the contents is lost. It follows over-carbonation, refermentation in pack, or nucleating material in suspension.
Light strike: Damage caused by light, particularly in the ultraviolet and near-blue range, generating sulphur compounds that give a cabbage or skunky aroma in ciders bottled in clear or green glass.
Mercaptan: A sulphur compound formed when hydrogen sulphide reacts with ethanol and other constituents, smelling of onion, rubber, garlic or drains. Far harder to remove than the hydrogen sulphide it comes from.
Metallic taint: A metallic or inky taste and, in some cases, a haze, caused by iron or copper picked up from unsuitable equipment. Both metals also catalyse oxidation. Metallic taint →
Mother of vinegar: The gelatinous cellulose mat produced by acetic acid bacteria at a liquid surface. In a vinegar barrel it is the working culture; in a cider cask it is proof that the batch is being lost.
Mould taint: Earthy, musty character carried into cider from mouldy fruit, damp wooden equipment or a contaminated cellar, distinct in origin from cork taint though similar on the nose. Mould taint →
Oxidation: The chemical damage done by oxygen to a finished cider: loss of fresh fruit aroma, browning, and the arrival of acetaldehyde, nutty and sherry-like notes.
Pectin haze: A persistent, fine haze caused by pectin remaining in suspension. It does not settle, does not respond to fining and is cleared only by pectolytic enzyme. Pectin haze →
Pinking: The development of a pink or salmon blush in a pale cider, usually after a period of oxygen exposure, arising from the oxidation of colourless phenolic precursors.
Plastic and packaging taint: Off-aromas picked up from unsuitable plastics, seals, hoses or bag-in-box liners, ranging from a plastic or chemical note to the medicinal character of chlorophenols.
Protein haze: A haze formed when proteins and phenolics combine, often appearing after a temperature change in bottle. It is prevented by bentonite fining and by cold stabilisation before packaging. Protein haze →
Reduction: The accumulation of volatile sulphur compounds — hydrogen sulphide, mercaptans and disulphides — in an oxygen-starved ferment or maturing cider, giving rotten egg, drain and rubber aromas. Reduction →
Ropiness: A texture fault in which the cider becomes viscous and pours in an oily rope, caused by lactic acid bacteria producing extracellular glucan polysaccharide.
Sediment: Solid material settled at the bottom of a bottle or cask: yeast, tannin-protein complexes, pectin or tartrates. Expected in bottle-conditioned and unfiltered cider, unwanted in a bright one.
Starch haze: A haze from starch carried in with under-ripe fruit, identified by an iodine test turning the sample blue-black. Amylase treatment clears it; fining and filtration alone do not. Starch haze →
Sulphite excess: An addition of sulphur dioxide large enough to be perceptible as a sharp, struck-match or burnt aroma and a prickling sensation in the nose, and to suppress the cider’s fruit. Excess sulphur dioxide →
Unwanted refermentation: Fermentation restarting in a sealed container that was not intended to be conditioned, producing gas, haze, sediment and, in bottles, dangerous pressure.

Equipment (30)

Presses, mills, vessels and cellar kit, from the traditional to the industrial.

Apple mill: The machine that reduces whole fruit to pomace. Modern forms include scratter, hammer, centrifugal and roller mills; the word also historically named the whole cider-making premises.
Bag-in-box: A collapsible plastic bag inside a cardboard carton, fitted with a tap. Because the bag collapses as the cider is drawn, no air enters, which makes it a good format for still, unpasteurised cider.
Basket press: A press in which pomace is loaded into a slatted cylindrical basket and compressed from above by a plate, juice escaping between the staves. Simple, common at small scale, and lower-yielding than a layered press. The basket press →
Belt press: A continuous press in which pomace passes between converging fabric belts over rollers, juice being squeezed out as the gap narrows. High throughput, used by larger mills. The belt press →
Bladder press: A press in which an inflating membrane presses pomace outward against a perforated drum. Gentle, quick to load and clean, and widely used at small and medium scale. The bladder or pneumatic press →
Bung: The stopper closing the filling hole of a cask or vat. During fermentation it is left loose or replaced by an airlock; afterwards it is driven home to exclude air.
Butt: One of the largest traditional cask sizes, conventionally twice a hogshead. As with all historic cask names, the capacity varied by trade and period.
Cask: A wooden vessel of staves bound by hoops, bulging at the middle so it can be rolled and turned. Casks both store cider and shape it, admitting a slow ingress of oxygen through the wood.
Cork and cage: The closure of a sparkling bottle: a compressed cork held down by a wire cage, the muselet. The metal clip used during secondary fermentation before the final cork is an agrafe. Corks, agrafes and muselets →
Crown cap: The pressed metal closure crimped over a bottle lip, lined with a compressible seal. It holds pressure reliably and is the standard closure for bottle-conditioned cider. Crown caps, swing tops and the tools that fit them →
Demijohn: A large narrow-necked glass or plastic vessel, typically of one to five gallons, used for small-scale fermentation and maturation under an airlock.
Firkin: A small cask, conventionally a quarter of a barrel and nine imperial gallons in the British beer trade. Firkins and pins are the sizes in which traditional draught cider commonly reaches a bar.
Hammer mill: A mill that shatters fruit with swinging hammers inside a screened chamber, the screen aperture setting particle size. Fast and high-capacity, but capable of producing pomace too fine to press. The hammer mill →
Hogshead: A cask size long used for cider. Cask sizes were never fully standardised across trades and regions, and a cider hogshead was not necessarily the same volume as a beer or wine one.
Hydraulic press: A press that applies force through a hydraulic ram, allowing high and precisely controlled pressure. It is the usual power source for a modern rack-and-cloth press.
Hydrometer: A weighted float whose depth of immersion indicates the density of a liquid, used to read specific gravity before and during fermentation.
Keeve: The open vessel in which juice is held while it forms its brown cap. The word is also used as a verb for the process itself, which took its name from the vessel.
Keg: A sealed pressurised container for dispensing cider under applied gas, as distinct from a cask, which is vented and served by gravity or hand pump.
Keystone: The small plug set into the end of a cask, through which a tap is driven when the cask is put on to serve.
Kilderkin: A cask of half a barrel — eighteen imperial gallons in the British beer trade — between a firkin and a barrel in size.
pH meter: An electrode instrument measuring hydrogen ion activity directly. It is the only practical way to determine a juice’s pH accurately, since indicator papers lack the resolution the decisions require.
Pipe: A large elongated cask, associated chiefly with the fortified wine trade and used in cider houses that acquired their vessels second-hand from it.
Plate filter: A filter in which cider is pumped through a stack of cellulose sheets held in a frame, the sheet grade determining the fineness of filtration from coarse polish to near-sterile. Filters: plate, sheet, cartridge and crossflow →
Refractometer: An optical instrument that measures the refractive index of a drop of juice and reads it out as degrees Brix. Accurate on unfermented juice and unreliable once alcohol is present. The refractometer, and why it lies during fermentation →
Screw press: A press in which pressure is applied by turning a threaded screw against the cheese. Historic timber presses used a great wooden screw; modern continuous twin-screw presses use rotating augers instead.
Shive: The wooden or plastic plug driven into the bung hole on the belly of a cask, carrying a smaller central section through which a spile can be pushed to vent gas.
Spile: A small peg driven into the shive to control the escape of carbon dioxide from a cask. A porous soft spile lets gas vent; a hard spile seals the cask to retain condition.
Stone mill: The pre-industrial cider mill: a circular stone trough, the chase, in which an upright stone wheel was drawn round by a horse to crush fruit against the trough.
Trial jar: A tall narrow cylinder in which a sample is held for a hydrometer reading, deep enough for the instrument to float clear of the base and narrow enough to need little juice.
Vat: A large vessel for fermenting or storing cider, historically an open or loosely covered wooden tub, now more often a closed stainless steel tank.

Law and labelling (24)

Terms that carry a legal meaning, and the jurisdiction each one belongs to.

Alcohol by volume: The proportion of a drink’s volume that is pure ethanol at 20 degrees Celsius, expressed as a percentage. It is the figure labelling law requires on drinks above 1.2 per cent.
AOC · French: The French national appellation system, administered by INAO, under which the cider, perry and Calvados appellations of Normandy and Brittany are defined. AOC names are also registered at European level as AOP or PDO.
Apparent juice content: The proportion of a cider that is treated as having come from apple juice, calculated for excise purposes from the product’s composition rather than measured directly at the mill.
Best before: A quality date indicating how long a product remains at its best under stated storage conditions. It is not a safety date, and drinks above a certain strength are exempt from requiring one.
Cahier des charges · French: The product specification behind a French appellation: the binding document that sets out the area, cultivars, cultivation, processing, composition and labelling rules a product must meet to use the name.
Consejo regulador · Spanish: The regulating council of a Spanish protected designation, responsible for maintaining the permitted variety list, inspecting producers and certifying that each batch meets the specification.
Contains sulphites: The mandatory allergen declaration required on a drink containing more than 10 mg/L of sulphur dioxide, expressed as total SO₂.
De-alcoholised: Made by removing alcohol from a fermented drink, typically by vacuum distillation, spinning cone or membrane methods, rather than by never fermenting it.
Draught relief: A reduced United Kingdom duty rate for qualifying products packaged in large containers for dispense on licensed premises, intended to favour on-trade draught sales over packaged retail.
Drink-drive limit: The maximum blood, breath or urine alcohol concentration at which a person may lawfully drive. In the United Kingdom the limit in Scotland is lower than in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Duty band: A range of alcoholic strength within which a single rate of alcohol duty applies. The United Kingdom moved to a strength-based banded system in 2023, so a small change in ABV can change the tax substantially.
Fruit wine and cider standard: The Australia New Zealand standard defining what may be sold as cider or perry, requiring fermentation of fruit juice and setting the conditions under which additions are permitted. Cider and perry under the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code →
Geographical indication: The general term for a protected product name tied to a place, covering PDO, PGI and their equivalents in national systems worldwide.
Hard cider tax class: The United States federal tax category for cider, bounded by alcoholic strength, carbonation level and permitted fruit. Products outside those bounds are taxed at wine rates.
Ingredients declaration: The list of ingredients required on a food or drink label. Alcoholic drinks above 1.2 per cent have historically been exempt in the European Union and United Kingdom, which is why many cider labels carry none.
Made-wine: A United Kingdom excise category for fermented alcoholic drinks that are neither beer, cider, perry nor wine of fresh grapes. A cider that fails the juice-content or strength tests is taxed as made-wine.
Patulin limit: The maximum permitted concentration of patulin in apple juice and apple products, set by food safety regulators and reflected in international standards.
PDO: A protected name under which every stage of production, processing and preparation must take place in the defined area, using raw materials from it. The strictest of the geographical schemes.
PGI: A protected name requiring that at least one stage of production, processing or preparation takes place in the defined area, and that the product’s reputation or quality is attributable to it.
Pure juice requirement: The French rule that cidre and poiré must be produced from apple or pear juice, or from their concentrate reconstituted to the original strength, without added water beyond that reconstitution.
Small producer relief: A United Kingdom duty relief giving reduced rates to producers whose annual production falls below a stated threshold, tapering as production rises.
Standard drink: A national reference quantity of alcohol used in health guidance. It is not internationally consistent: a United States standard drink contains 14 grams of ethanol against the United Kingdom unit’s 8.
TSG: A protected name for a traditional recipe or method rather than a place. A TSG can be made anywhere, provided the specified traditional composition or production method is followed.
Unit of alcohol: The United Kingdom measure of alcohol consumed: one unit is 10 ml, or 8 grams, of pure ethanol. Units are calculated as volume in litres multiplied by ABV.

Serving (14)

Pouring, glassware and how cider reaches a drinker.

Bembel · German: The grey salt-glazed stoneware jug, decorated with cobalt blue, in which Apfelwein is served in and around Frankfurt. It comes in graduated sizes and keeps the contents cool.
Cellar conditions: How cider is kept before opening: cool, dark and stable. Warmth accelerates ageing and oxidation, light causes light strike in clear glass, and temperature swings can precipitate haze.
Culete · Spanish: The measure poured at one time in an Asturian cider house and drunk straight down. The regulating council puts it at not less than 100 millilitres, and six to the bottle.
Decanting: Pouring a bottle-conditioned or unfiltered cider off its deposit into another vessel, or pouring it in one steady movement so the sediment stays in the bottle.
Escanciar · Spanish: The Asturian pour: the bottle held high overhead and the glass low at the hip, so that a thin stream falls a metre or more and breaks on the rim of the tilted glass.
Espalme · Asturian: The rapid and complete disappearance of the foam raised in the glass by the pour. Not the foam itself — its collapse.
Geripptes · German: The ribbed, faceted glass used for Apfelwein. The diamond cutting gives grip to a hand greasy from food and refracts light through a drink that is otherwise plain in appearance.
Glassware: The vessel a cider is served in, which changes its aroma and appearance. A tapering glass concentrates volatiles at the nose; a wide, thin-walled Asturian glass is shaped for the long pour instead.
Gravity dispense: Serving cider from a tap in the cask or box by gravity alone, without pump or applied gas. It is the traditional method for still farmhouse cider and the standard at cider festivals.
Hand pump: A manual suction pump on a bar that draws cider from a cask in the cellar. It agitates the cider slightly on the way up, which raises what carbonation there is.
On draught: Served from a bulk container on the premises rather than from a sealed bottle or can. In Britain the phrase covers both vented cask cider and pressurised keg cider, which behave quite differently.
Schoppen · German: A traditional German measure of drink, and the standard serving of Apfelwein in a Geripptes — commonly around a quarter or a third of a litre depending on the region and the house.
Serving temperature: The temperature at which a cider is poured, which alters what can be perceived: cold suppresses aroma, sweetness and bitterness, and accentuates acidity and carbonation.
Sharing the glass: The convention in Asturian and Basque cider houses by which one glass circulates through a group, each person drinking their pour immediately and rinsing the rim before passing it on.

Culture and custom (21)

The names of practices, places and occasions, mostly in their own languages.

Apfelweinwirtschaft · German: A Frankfurt-area tavern specialising in Apfelwein, serving it from the Bembel with regional food, and identified traditionally by a pine wreath hung outside when new cider is ready. The Frankfurt Apfelwein house →
Apple Day: An annual celebration of orchards and local apple varieties held on and around 21 October, established in Britain in 1990 and now marked by orchard groups, museums and cider producers.
Apple howling: A Sussex and south-eastern name for the orchard wassail, in which parties went from orchard to orchard shouting and beating the trees to wake them and drive off harm.
Chigre · Asturian: An Asturian cider bar, where sidra natural is poured by the bottle and shared, with a culete served at a time and the drip tray running constantly.
Cider competition: A judged event at which ciders and perries are assessed blind against style guidelines, usually by trained or accredited judges working to a scoresheet.
Cider with food: The regional traditions of eating with cider — Asturian cider houses with salt cod and cabrales, Basque cider houses with beef chop, Normandy with tripe and cheese, the West Country with cheddar and pork.
Community orchard: An orchard owned or managed collectively for public benefit rather than commercial fruit production, used for local varieties, education, events and habitat.
Espicha · Asturian: An Asturian cider gathering held at a llagar, at which cider is drawn straight from the vat and eaten with standing food — traditionally the occasion at which the new season’s cider is judged.
Kelterei · German: A German pressing works: the business that mills and presses fruit and makes juice or Apfelwein, from keltern, to press.
Llagar · Asturian: An Asturian cider house: the press, the cellar of chestnut vats, and the room where the new cider is tasted and sold. The word means both the press itself and the building around it.
Obstler · German: A clear fruit spirit of the German-speaking Alps and their foothills, distilled from apples and pears — often the same orchard fruit that supplies Most.
Plant pears for your heirs: A traditional saying of the perry counties, recording that a perry pear planted now will not crop meaningfully in the planter’s working life but will feed generations after.
Sagardoa · Basque: The Basque word for cider. It is usually parsed as sagar (apple) and ardo (wine) — apple wine — and the drink is central to Basque food culture.
Sagardotegi · Basque: A Basque cider house: a working cidery with a dining room, open from January to spring, where guests eat a set menu and drink from the kupela, the great vats, at the cry of txotx.
Scrumping: Taking apples from someone else’s trees without permission, traditionally by children. The word is West Country dialect and is the probable source of scrumpy.
Sidrería · Spanish: A cider house or cider restaurant in Spain, whether an Asturian establishment pouring bottled sidra natural or a Basque sagardotegi serving from the vat. The Asturian sidrería →
Streuobstwiese · German: A central European traditional orchard: widely spaced standard fruit trees of mixed species and variety scattered over grassland that is grazed or cut for hay.
Terroir · French: The claim that a place — its soil, climate, aspect and the practices grown up around them — leaves a recognisable mark on what is made there. In cider the evidence for it is stronger for cultivar and practice than for soil.
The three counties: Herefordshire, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire taken together — the heartland of English perry and a principal centre of cider, with a shared orchard tradition and cultivar stock.
Txotx · Basque: The call — and the small wooden peg it names — announcing that a vat is open in a sagardotegi, at which guests come with their glasses to catch a thin jet of cider straight from the barrel.
Wassail: A midwinter orchard custom in which people gather round a chosen apple tree to drink its health, make noise, and pour or hang cider and soaked toast in its branches, traditionally to secure the coming crop.

History (19)

Words that describe how cider used to be made, taxed and paid.

Cider revival: The renewed interest since the late twentieth century in full-juice, regional and traditionally made cider, in Britain, North America and elsewhere, following a long period of consolidation.
Cider royal: A historic strengthened cider, made by adding spirit, honey or sugar, or by concentrating the juice — a category recorded in seventeenth-century English writing on cider.
Cider tax: The excise on cider imposed in 1763, which extended excise officers’ powers of entry to private houses in cider counties and provoked serious protest before being repealed three years later.
Devonshire colic: An epidemic of lead poisoning in the eighteenth-century West Country, traced to lead used in cider mills, presses and vessels, and identified as such by the physician George Baker in 1767.
Early bottling: The seventeenth-century English practice of bottling cider with residual sugar in strong glass so that it refermented and sparkled — documented decades before comparable techniques are recorded for wine.
Herefordshire Pomona: The illustrated survey of apples and pears produced by the Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club in the late nineteenth century, and the most substantial visual record of English cider fruit of its period.
Industrialisation: The twentieth-century transformation of cider from a farm product consumed locally into a national branded drink made in large factories from bought-in fruit and concentrate.
Johnny Appleseed: John Chapman, an American nurseryman of the early nineteenth century who planted apple nurseries across the Ohio valley frontier. His trees were seedlings, so their fruit was chiefly for cider rather than for eating.
Long Ashton Research Station: The Somerset research station, founded as the National Fruit and Cider Institute in 1903 and later part of the University of Bristol, whose analyses of cider fruit and fermentation underpin most English cider science.
Orchard loss: The long twentieth-century decline in traditional orchard area across Britain and much of Europe, through clearance for other agriculture, replanting to intensive systems, and neglect.
Pomona · Latin: A descriptive and usually illustrated book of fruit varieties. The word is from the Roman goddess of fruit trees, and the genre is the principal historic record of cider and perry cultivars.
Pound house: The farm building in which apples were pounded, pressed and fermented — the West Country name for the cider house, from the old verb to pound, meaning to mill.
Prohibition: The United States ban on the manufacture and sale of alcoholic drinks between 1920 and 1933, which broke the continuity of American cider-making and coincided with the loss of many cider orchards.
Royal Society cider committee: The group convened within the early Royal Society in the 1660s to gather and publish information on cider-making. Pomona is that enterprise’s output rather than one man’s book: it was annexed to Evelyn’s Sylva by express order of the Society, and its recorded contributors include John Beale, Daniel Colwall, Paul Neile, John Newburgh and Sylas Taylor alongside Evelyn.
Sicera · Latin: The Late Latin word from which cider, cidre, sidra and sagardo descend, itself from Greek sikera and ultimately from a Semitic root meaning strong drink.
Stumming: The old practice of burning a sulphur match inside a cask before filling it, to sterilise the vessel and suppress fermentation in the cider put into it — the ancestor of modern sulphiting.
Temperance movement: The nineteenth and early twentieth-century campaigns against alcohol consumption, which reshaped cider-producing regions by attacking the truck system, promoting unfermented juice, and in some countries removing orchards.
The Redstreak era: The seventeenth-century period in which Herefordshire cider made from the Redstreak apple was promoted as a national drink capable of rivalling imported wine, and orchards were planted on that expectation.
Truck system: The practice of paying farm labourers partly in cider rather than wholly in money. It was widespread in the West Country and the three counties and was progressively outlawed by the Truck Acts of the nineteenth century.

Every term, A–Z

The whole glossary in one alphabetical list, for the reader who already knows the word.

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

Quince rootstock

R

S

T

U

V

W

Y

Z

Comparisons — pairs of terms that are routinely confused with each other, treated at length.
How to read a cider label — the terms you will actually meet on a bottle, in the order they appear.
Search — finds terms by their aliases and by their spellings in other languages.