Glossary · Fermentation
Dosage
French. Kept in its own language here rather than translated into the nearest English word, because the nearest English word is usually cut on a different axis.
Also written liqueur d’expédition. Each is a name for the same thing, which is why none of them has an entry of its own.
Definition
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.
- Subject
- Fermentation
- Language
- French
- Also written
- liqueur d’expédition
In more detail
Because the dosage is added after the last fermentation, its sugar is not consumed, and it is therefore the producer’s final control on sweetness. A zero dosage, topping up with the same dry cider, gives the driest expression of the base.
Related terms
Terms that belong to the same part of the subject, or that this one is routinely confused with.
Fermentation
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.
Fermentation
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.
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.
Fermentation
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.
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.
The New Cider Maker’s Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide for Craft Producers
Claude Jolicoeur, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2013. ISBN 9781603584739 · reference work · bibliographic record verified, not opened 2026-08-25
Bibliographic record verified on 2026-08-25 against the Open Library union catalogue: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2013, ISBN 9781603584739, one edition recorded. That establishes the citation points at a real book in a stated edition, which is what a citation needs and is all it establishes. No copy was opened and nothing is quoted from it. The book itself is in print and not digitised in any open collection; where CiderHQ needs a figure from this territory it uses an accessible research source instead and says so.
Denominación de Origen Protegida Sidra de Asturias
Consejo Regulador de la DOP Sidra de Asturias · designation authority · passage verified 2026-08-24
The regulating council for Asturian cider. Read on 2026-08-24, and it turned out to carry far more than a permitted-variety list: an agronomic and technological characterisation of each admitted variety, with total acidity, total polyphenols, vigour, flowering, ripening, cropping and susceptibility to fungal disease. The characterisation is credited to SERIDA’s fruit-research programme. Two things it settles are corrections to what CiderHQ previously held: Asturias sorts cider fruit into nine technological blocks rather than five, and it publishes acidity as sulphuric acid rather than malic. The figures are transcribed into `data/trials/serida-asturias.ts` and cite this source, because this is where they were read.