Skip to content
CiderHQ
Search

Tasting guide

Writing a tasting note that is worth reading later

How do I write a tasting note that is actually useful?

In short

Record four things and stop: the conditions you tasted under, what you perceived in each of the five stages, how intense each was, and — where you can — what causes it. A note that carries those four is still useful a year later and to somebody who was not there.

The test for whether it is a tasting note or an advertisement is simple: would it be equally useful to somebody who is never going to drink this? A note saying "marked astringency building over the finish, low fruit, pronounced oxidative character" passes. A note saying "gorgeous, a real find" carries no information at all.

Verdicts and scores are a separate activity from description, and combining them contaminates the description — a taster who has decided a cider is good finds fewer faults in it.

Who this is for. A maker keeping records across batches, somebody comparing several ciders systematically, or a reader who wants to describe what they taste in terms that another person could act on. (assumes some experience · 6 steps)

Worth reading first

The path

Each step says what happens, why it matters downstream, and what you are actually deciding. The links under a step are where the depth is.

  1. 1. Conditions go at the top, not in a footnote

    Temperature, glass, how long since opening, and — if it is bottle-conditioned — whether it was poured off the sediment or through it. Each of these changes the observations enough that a note without them cannot be compared with anything.

    Also the date, and for a maker the batch identity. A tasting note without a date is an anecdote.

    Why it matters: Two notes on the same cider that disagree are usually two different serving temperatures, and without the conditions there is no way to find that out.

    Go deeper

    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.

  2. 2. Separate the observation from the explanation

    Write what you perceived first and what you think caused it second, and keep them visibly apart. "Sharp, mouth-watering acidity" is an observation. "Probably malic, so no malolactic" is an inference. The first is data and stays true; the second is a hypothesis and may be wrong.

    The site’s descriptor vocabulary is built for exactly this: each descriptor names a perception and, separately, the compound or process that produces it. Using the descriptor gives you the observation; following it gives you the candidate cause.

    Why it matters: Notes that fuse the two cannot be revisited. A note recording "oxidised" cannot later be re-read as "aged in wood, which I misattributed".

    What you are deciding

    • Whether you are confident enough in a cause to write it at all. "Cause not identified" is a legitimate and useful entry.

    Go deeper

    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.

    • The Science of Cidermaking and associated technical writing

      Andrew Lea · reference work · passage verified 2026-08-24

      Written by a food chemist who worked at Long Ashton on apple phenolics. Unusual among specialist cider writing in that it is primary-research-adjacent: the author is describing work he did, and cites the literature. This is why it is registered at tier 1 for chemistry while a general cider book is not.

  3. 3. Record intensity, because presence alone decides nothing

    Almost every interesting question about cider is a threshold question rather than a presence question. Brettanomyces character at low intensity is complexity and at high intensity is a fault. Volatile acidity below threshold gives lift. Oxidative character is a style marker or a defect depending entirely on how much of it there is.

    A simple three-band scale — trace, present, dominant — is enough and is more reliable than a ten-point one, because the discrimination people can actually reproduce between sessions is coarse.

    Why it matters: A note listing descriptors without intensities cannot distinguish a fine cider from a faulty one, since both may carry the same list.

    Go deeper

    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.

    • The Science of Cidermaking and associated technical writing

      Andrew Lea · reference work · passage verified 2026-08-24

      Written by a food chemist who worked at Long Ashton on apple phenolics. Unusual among specialist cider writing in that it is primary-research-adjacent: the author is describing work he did, and cites the literature. This is why it is registered at tier 1 for chemistry while a general cider book is not.

  4. 4. Keep the register neutral, and know why

    The received vocabulary of drinks writing is promotional by construction. A whole class of its adjectives are not descriptions of a liquid at all — they describe an appetite, and they instruct the reader to share it. The test is grammatical rather than a matter of taste: if the word is about how much somebody wants the drink rather than about a property of the drink, it is doing persuasion. A note built from those words tells you about the writer’s enthusiasm and nothing about the cider.

    The discipline is not prudishness. A promotional note is a worse instrument: it does not survive disagreement, it cannot be compared with another taster’s, and it cannot be used to diagnose a batch. Neutral description is the more accurate form as well as the more responsible one.

    There is a second and subtler failure, which is borrowing a vocabulary wholesale from wine. Cider is not wine and several wine terms mean something specific there that does not transfer — minerality has no agreed referent even in wine, terroir imports a set of claims about place that the cider evidence does not support, and the whole apparatus of vintage judgement assumes a fruit whose seasonal variation has been studied for centuries. Where a wine word genuinely names a cider sensation it is worth using; where it is doing the work of sounding serious it is worth removing.

    Why it matters: This is also the site’s editorial position, enforced by an automated check: CiderHQ describes alcohol and does not encourage its consumption.

    What you are deciding

    • Whether a word in the note is doing descriptive work or persuasive work. If removing it loses no information, it was persuasive.

    Go deeper

    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.

  5. 5. A note is an instrument, and it has to survive being wrong

    The value of a note is realised at the second reading, weeks or months later, and almost always because something has changed. A batch has developed; a second bottle tastes different from the first; a fault that was a trace has become dominant. The note is what turns that into evidence rather than into an impression of an impression.

    Which means it has to be written so that a later reader — including you — can tell what was observed from what was concluded. The commonest failure is a note that reads "oxidised" and nothing else. A year later there is no way to recover whether that meant a faint sherry note in an otherwise fresh cider or a flat, cardboard-dominated glass, and those two are different findings about different problems.

    Why it matters: A note that cannot be re-read against new information is a diary entry. One that can is the only longitudinal instrument a maker has.

    What you are deciding

    • Whether to record what you did not find. An explicit "no sulphur character detected" is worth writing where a fault was suspected, because its absence is evidence.
    • Whether to note your own state. Time of day, whether you had eaten, whether this was the fifth sample — all of them move the result, and a note that records them can be discounted appropriately later.

    Go deeper

    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.

    • The Science of Cidermaking and associated technical writing

      Andrew Lea · reference work · passage verified 2026-08-24

      Written by a food chemist who worked at Long Ashton on apple phenolics. Unusual among specialist cider writing in that it is primary-research-adjacent: the author is describing work he did, and cites the literature. This is why it is registered at tier 1 for chemistry while a general cider book is not.

  6. 6. A structure that fits on one line per stage

    Appearance: colour, clarity, carbonation as observed. Aroma: family, then descriptors, then intensity. Palate: the structural dimensions — sweetness, acidity, bitterness, astringency, body — each with a level. Finish: length, what persists, anything that only appears here. Then a separate line for anything you suspect is a fault, with what would confirm it.

    That last line is what makes a note actionable for a maker. "Possible ethyl acetate — would be confirmed by a solvent note strengthening as the glass warms" is a note somebody can do something with.

    Why it matters: A fixed structure means an absence is informative. A note with an empty finish line records that there was no finish, which a free-form note cannot distinguish from forgetting to mention it.

    Go deeper

    • Tasting note builder — This structure as a tool, which fills in the conditions line and will not let a descriptor in without an intensity — and as a sheet to print and fill in beside the glass.
    • The sensory model CiderHQ uses — The dimensions the palate line is scored against.
    • What to notice, in order — What belongs in each line.
    • Fault finder — Turning a suspected-fault line into a ranked shortlist with what separates the candidates.

    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.

Where to go next

Guides that follow on from this one.

Questions this answers

Shown so you can tell whether this is the guide you wanted.

Where to go next

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.