Glossary · Sensory
Body
Definition
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.
- Subject
- Sensory
Where this is covered properly
The glossary defines; these pages explain. Each is described in its own words.
Related terms
Terms that belong to the same part of the subject, or that this one is routinely confused with.
Sensory
Mouthfeel
The tactile impression of a drink in the mouth — viscosity, weight, texture, prickle and drying — as distinct from its taste and aroma.
Chemistry
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.
Chemistry
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.
Chemistry
Tannin
In cider usage, the phenolic material responsible for bitterness and astringency, principally condensed tannins — procyanidins — built from catechin and epicatechin units.
Law and labelling
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.
Where to go next
- Cider glossary — The whole vocabulary, by subject and A–Z.
- Comparisons — Terms that are only really clear when set against the thing they are not.
- Search — Finds terms by their aliases and by their spellings in other languages.
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.
Washington State University cider research programme
Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center · university · passage verified 2026-08-24
The single most useful open cider dataset CiderHQ has found. The programme’s cultivar performance database gives juice chemistry, orchard behaviour, bloom and harvest timing and cider-maker tasting notes for 73 cultivars grown at one maritime site over fifteen years, and — unusually — publishes its classification thresholds alongside its figures, so the classification can be checked rather than taken on trust. It also states outright that its results diverge from the English ones. Read in full on 2026-08-24 and transcribed into `data/trials/wsu-mount-vernon.ts`; four published figures were found to be impossible and are withheld there with their reasons.
BJCP Beer Style Guidelines — cider and perry categories
Beer Judge Certification Program · classification framework · retrieved 2026-08-24
Opened on 2026-08-24, and the edition matters. CiderHQ registered the 2015 cider guidelines; BJCP has since published a 2025 cider edition, and the old URL now redirects into the current guidelines index. A competition style guide is a dated framework rather than a standing definition, and citing the wrong edition of one is the same class of error as citing a superseded specification. CiderHQ treats BJCP as one competition framework among several and never as the universal cider taxonomy.