Glossary · Cider
Sauermost
German. 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.
Definition
Fermented apple juice in Swiss and southern German usage — "sour must" — as opposed to the unfermented Süssmost. Typically dry, acidic and modest in strength.
- Subject
- Cider
- Language
- German
In more detail
The pair Süssmost and Sauermost is the clearest naming convention in any cider language, and it is the one English lacks. Sweet must is the unfermented juice; sour must is the same juice after fermentation. Nothing is guessed from context, no qualifier has to be added, and the confusion that produces the American phrase "hard cider" cannot arise.
The drink itself is characteristically dry, acidic and modest — commonly around 4 to 6 per cent — because the fruit is largely low-tannin culinary and dual-purpose varieties rather than the tannic cider apples of the west of England and Normandy. Swiss Suure Most is the same drink and the same word in dialect.
Where this is covered properly
The glossary defines; these pages explain. Each is described in its own words.
Style
Suure Most
The Swiss farmhouse cider of the plateau, typically dry and still, drawn from meadow-orchard fruit and distinguished in local usage from the unfermented sweet juice of the same name.
Style
Most
The farmhouse fermented fruit drink of Austria and southern Germany, made from apples, pears or both, and belonging to a meadow-orchard landscape as much as to a recipe.
Related terms
Terms that belong to the same part of the subject, or that this one is routinely confused with.
Cider
Süssmost
Unfermented apple or pear juice, literally "sweet must". In Switzerland it is the standard term for the soft drink pressed from cider fruit.
Cider
Most
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.
Cider
Apfelwein
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.
Cider
Viez
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*.
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.
Hochschule Geisenheim University — beverage technology
Hochschule Geisenheim · university · retrieved 2026-08-24
German beverage-technology research covering apple wine and fruit juice processing, including the enzymology of clarification.
European Cider and Fruit Wine Association (AICV)
AICV · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24