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Whether cloudy cider is a fault

Is cloudy cider off?

In short

Almost always no. Most cloudy cider is unfiltered cider, and haze is the expected appearance of a drink from which nothing has been removed. Several major traditions produce cloudy cider deliberately.

The case that warrants attention is a cider that has changed. A product that was bright when bought and is now hazy has had something grow in it, and that will announce itself in the aroma and the taste — gas where there should be none, vinegar, solvent, or a flavour that has moved.

Appearance alone settles nothing. The reliable test is whether the cider smells and tastes as it should, and whether the haze arrived in the glass or arrived after packaging.

The question to ask instead

Fault diagnosis in cider works by smell first, taste second and appearance last, because appearance is the least specific of the three. A haze can be yeast, fruit solids, pectin, protein or a spoilage organism, and those look broadly alike; they do not smell alike.

So the useful question is not whether the cider is cloudy but whether it has changed. A cider sold unfiltered was always going to be hazy. A cider that was clear on purchase and is hazy now has had something happen to it, and the aroma will usually say what.

The second useful question is whether there is unexpected gas. A still cider that fizzes when opened, or a bottle whose closure has lifted, has fermented in the container. That may be harmless refermentation of residual sugar or it may be spoilage, but either way something has been metabolising.

Signs that a haze does indicate a problem

None of these is diagnosed by cloudiness. Each of them can occur in a perfectly clear cider, and cloudiness can occur without any of them.

Where cloudiness is required rather than tolerated

Sidra natural under its Asturian and Basque designations is produced without filtration and is expected to be hazy. Bottle-conditioned cider carries a yeast deposit by definition. English farmhouse cider poured from a cask is routinely opaque. In each case the haze is a consequence of the production method that defines the category.

Consumer campaigning definitions of real cider in Britain include the absence of pasteurisation and filtration among their criteria, which makes haze a positive indicator within that framework. That is a campaigning position rather than a technical one, and it does not follow that a filtered cider is worse — only that it is a different thing.

The one respect in which haze does correlate with anything is stability. Unfiltered, unpasteurised cider continues to change in the container, faster than a stabilised product does. A cloudy cider is more likely to be different in six months, and that is a fact about the method rather than a criticism of it.

Sediment is not hazeA deposit at the bottom of a bottle and a haze through the whole liquid are different observations. Sediment in a bottle-conditioned cider is expected and settles; a haze that will not settle in a still cider is a colloidal one and tells you about how the cider was processed.

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