Glossary · Faults
Sediment
Also written deposit. Each is a name for the same thing, which is why none of them has an entry of its own.
Definition
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.
- Subject
- Faults
- Also written
- deposit
In more detail
Sediment is only a fault in context. A bottle-conditioned cider must have it, and pouring is adjusted accordingly; a filtered, bright product that throws a deposit has become unstable, and the question is which of the several possible instabilities it is.
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.
Fermentation
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.
Fermentation
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.
Fermentation
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.
Serving
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.
Faults
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.
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.
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.
Cider and perry production technical training material
Peter Mitchell / Cider and Perry Academy · reference work · registered as competent for this subject
Searched again on 2026-08-25 and it remains the one printed source here that a bibliographic check cannot fix, because it is not a published work with an edition. It is course material issued to participants of a training programme, so there is no catalogue record to verify, no ISBN, and no lawful public copy. Its state stays `registered` for that reason rather than through inattention.