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Building a sense of what you like
How do I find out what kind of cider I like?
In short
By comparing deliberately rather than sampling randomly. Taste two or three ciders alongside each other that differ in one respect, decide which you prefer and why, and then change a different variable next time.
The variables worth working through first are sweetness, tannin, acidity and carbonation, in roughly that order, because they account for most of the difference between one cider and another.
Keep a short written record. Taste memory is unreliable, and a note that identifies what you liked and what it was made of is what turns a series of drinks into a working knowledge of your own preferences.
Change one thing at a time
| Variable | What to compare | What you learn |
|---|---|---|
| Sweetness | A dry and a medium cider from the same producer | Where your own threshold sits, and how much sweetness masks other things |
| Tannin | A West Country bittersweet-based cider against a cider from dessert or culinary fruit | Whether you want structure and grip or freshness and lightness |
| Acidity | An eastern-counties or sharp-fruit cider against a low-acid West Country one | How much sharpness you find refreshing rather than aggressive |
| Carbonation | A still cider against a sparkling one of similar sweetness | How much the gas changes your reading of the same drink |
| Tradition | A sidra natural, a cidre brut, an Apfelwein and an English farmhouse cider | How differently four traditions answer the same question |
| Fruit | Two single-varietal ciders from the same producer | What a variety actually contributes, with the method held constant |
| Perry | A perry against a cider of similar sweetness | What sorbitol and a different acid profile do |
Why comparison works and sampling does not
Human sensory judgement is far better at detecting differences than at judging absolutes. Asked whether a cider is sharp, most people struggle; asked which of two ciders is sharper, almost everyone answers correctly. Comparison converts a hard task into an easy one, and it is why trained sensory panels are built around difference tests rather than around ratings.
It also controls for everything else. Two ciders tasted a month apart differ in temperature, glass, mood, what you had just eaten and how tired you were. Two tasted side by side differ only in themselves.
The practical consequence is that a single unfamiliar cider tells you rather little. The same cider next to a familiar one tells you a great deal, because the familiar one acts as a reference point.
Reading your own preferences honestly
It is worth separating three things that often get run together: what you like, what you find interesting, and what you think you ought to like. They diverge, and the divergence is normal. A drinker can find a heavily phenolic farmhouse cider fascinating and still prefer to drink something else.
Preferences also move, and they move fastest for bitterness and astringency. Repeated exposure reliably increases tolerance of both, which is why people who dislike tannic cider at first often come to prefer it, and why an experienced taster is a poor judge of what a new drinker will find approachable.
There is no developmental hierarchy here. Preferring a light, sweet, sparkling cider is not a stage to be grown out of; it is a preference, and a large part of the world produces cider for exactly it. The point of building a sense of what you like is to be able to find it, not to arrive somewhere in particular.
Keeping a usable record
- Write down the producer, the name and the year if there is one — you will not remember them.
- Record the structure in a few words: sweetness, acidity, tannin, body, carbonation.
- Record one or two aroma impressions, in whatever words come, without worrying whether they are the standard ones.
- Note what it was made of if the label says: fruit, juice content, method, designation.
- Note whether you would want another glass, separately from whether you thought it was well made.
- Revisit the notes after a dozen ciders and look for what the ones you liked have in common. That pattern is more informative than any individual entry.
Also answered on this page
Questions this page covers, so you can tell at a glance whether it is the one you want.
- How do I know if I like dry or sweet cider?
- Should I taste ciders side by side?
- Do tastes in cider change over time?
- Where should a beginner start with cider?
Related
What people ask next
Questions readers ask about the things this page mentions. Each one goes to the section that answers it rather than to a page written to receive the question.
- How does ciderhq describe what a cider tastes like
- What do people get wrong about cider
- What does brut mean on a cider — On a French cidre, *brut* means dry, and in practice it also implies a higher alcohol than *doux* because more of the sugar has fermented. Its French thresholds are not the same as champagne’s.
- What is sidra natural — Sidra natural is the still, dry, unfiltered cider of Asturias and the Basque Country, bottled without added carbonation and poured from a height to rouse it. It is tart, funky and made to be drunk in small measures poured one at a time.
- What is apfelwein — Apfelwein is the dry, still, tart apple cider of Hessen in Germany, known locally as Ebbelwoi and served from a stoneware jug into a ridged glass. Despite the name it is a cider, not a wine in any technical sense.
- What should i notice when tasting a cider — Separate structure from flavour. Sweetness, acidity, bitterness, astringency, body and carbonation are the frame; apple, pear, floral, farmyard and oak are what hangs on it. Most confusion in tasting comes from describing one when you mean the other.
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.
ACA · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24
Publishes a widely used US cider style framework and runs the Certified Cider Professional programme. Cited as one framework among several rather than as a universal classification.
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.
European Cider and Fruit Wine Association (AICV)
AICV · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24
Where to go next
- Learn about cider — The rest of the introductory material, grouped by the question it answers.
- Glossary — Any word on this page you did not recognise, defined in one or two sentences.
- Comparisons — What separates cider from the drinks it is most often confused with.