Harvest
Fruit sorting
Taking rotten, mouldy and damaged fruit and foreign material out of the crop before it reaches the mill, which is the primary control on patulin in cider.
Also called Grading, Intake sorting, Culling, Picking over.
- Stage
- Harvest
- Traditional in
- No single tradition — used wherever it suits
- What it most changes
- Not recorded as moving a sensory dimension
- Safety
- Carries a safety consideration — see below
Fruit showing soft brown rot or visible mould must be discarded whole rather than trimmed, because patulin diffuses well beyond the visible lesion, is not destroyed by pressing or pasteurisation and is only partly degraded by fermentation. Patulin limits in apple juice and juice-containing products are set by regulators including EFSA and Codex Alimentarius; work to the limit that applies where you sell, not to a remembered number. See the patulin control and windfall management records.
What it is
The inspection step at which the crop is reduced to what the maker is prepared to press. It removes fruit with soft brown rot, mould growth, extensive skin breakdown or frost damage, and it removes what came in with the fruit: stones, clods, sticks, leaf, wire, and occasionally a small animal. Depending on scale it happens on a hand table beside the elevator, on a roller inspection belt where fruit turns so all sides can be seen, or through optical sorting equipment in the largest plants. It is unglamorous, labour-intensive, and the most consequential food-safety decision in the whole process.
Why it is used
- Rotten fruit carries patulin, and because no downstream step reliably removes it, exclusion at intake is the only effective control available to a cider maker.
- Mould-tainted fruit contributes musty and earthy aroma compounds that survive fermentation, so a batch spoiled at intake cannot be rescued by anything done later.
- Stones and metal wreck mill hammers and knives, and a stone that reaches the press can damage a bladder or a cloth in a way that costs far more than the sorting labour.
- Heavily bruised and split fruit brings a large oxidised, browning load into the pomace even when it is not microbiologically spoiled.
How it works
- Sorting is a visual and tactile discrimination: a rotted fruit is identified by the soft, sunken, brown lesion and the give under a thumb, both of which indicate that fungal pectinases have already macerated the tissue.
- A roller belt turns each fruit as it travels so that the underside is presented to the sorter, which matters because a fruit lying lesion-down on a flat belt passes inspection unchallenged.
- In a water flume, stones, soil and heavy debris sink while fruit floats, so the flume removes the mineral load and reduces the field soil that would otherwise reach the mill — but it does not select against rot, because rotten apples float too.
- Optical sorters classify fruit by reflected colour and, in some systems, by near-infrared response, which detects surface discolouration well and internal breakdown far less well.
The chemistry and the organisms
What is actually being changed, and by what. Each entry says what that compound or organism does in cider generally; this page is one place it does it.
Compounds involved
Patulin
A mycotoxin produced by the blue mould that rots stored apples, regulated in apple juice worldwide, and the clearest food-safety reason not to press rotten fruit.
Polyphenol oxidase
The copper enzyme that turns cut apple brown within seconds, and the reason a cidermaker has to decide, at the press, whether to let the juice oxidise or to stop it.
Organisms involved
Penicillium expansum
The blue mould of stored apples and the principal producer of patulin, the one genuine chemical safety issue that rotten cider fruit raises.
Monilinia fructigena
The brown rot of apples and pears, recognisable by concentric rings of buff pustules, and a major cause of fruit loss between the orchard and the mill.
Botrytis cinerea
Grey mould: a broad-host-range fruit rot whose laccase enzyme oxidises phenolics and whose glucans make a juice difficult to clarify.
What it is done with
The apple washer and the flotation tank
Cider fruit is gathered off the orchard floor, so it arrives with soil, grass, stones and rot attached; a flotation tank separates the fruit from the stones by density alone, and a spray or brush stage takes off what floating will not.
Elevators, conveyors and hoppers
Fruit moves by gravity where the building allows it and by flume, belt, bucket elevator or auger where it does not; each method bruises the fruit to a different degree, and each is a machine capable of drawing a person into it.
Bulk bins, crates and pallets
Fruit arrives in sacks, crates or bulk bins, and the container decides how deep the fruit sits, how well it breathes, how long it can wait and how it will be tipped — which makes it a quality decision as well as a handling one.
What can go wrong
Faults that begin at this step, or that this step makes more likely. Each one is set out with its causes and whether it can be put right.
Patulin contamination
Contamination of juice or cider with patulin, a mycotoxin produced by Penicillium expansum in rotting apples — a genuine food-safety question rather than a flavour one.
Mould taint
Musty, earthy, cellar-damp or rotten-fruit character carried in from mouldy fruit or from mouldy equipment, and a marker that the patulin question needs asking.
Volatile acidity
The measurable fraction of acidity that can be steam-distilled off, dominated by acetic acid and read as vinegar sharpness in the nose and a hard, hot finish.
Vinegar fly contamination
Small flies carrying acetic acid bacteria and spoilage yeasts directly into juice and cider, and depositing them wherever they land.
Gushing
Cider that erupts from the bottle on opening, either because it is over-pressurised or because something in it is nucleating the dissolved gas violently.
Smoke taint
Ashtray, burnt and medicinal character in cider made from fruit exposed to wildfire smoke, which enters the fruit as bound precursors and is released later.
Styles it produces
Categories in which this step is characteristic or required. Some name it in their definition; for others it is simply how they have always been made.
Euskal Sagardoa
Basque cider under its own protected designation, made from Basque-grown apples in the sagardotegi tradition of barrel service and dry, high-acid, still cider.
Single-varietal cider
Cider made wholly or overwhelmingly from one apple cultivar, presented so that the fruit’s own character is the subject of the drink.
Vintage cider
Cider from the fruit of a single named harvest, made and sold as an expression of that season rather than of a house style.
More on fruit sorting
The mycotoxin case for sorting is straightforward and the reason regulators treat it as the control point. Penicillium expansum enters through wounds, macerates tissue outwards, and produces patulin as it grows; the toxin diffuses ahead of the visible rot front, so the boundary between "bad" and "good" flesh in a single fruit is not where it appears to be. It survives the pH of apple juice, survives commercial pasteurisation, and passes through a press into the juice. Fermentation degrades much of it, so fermented cider is a lower-risk product than unfermented juice made from the same fruit, but the extent of that degradation varies and a maker cannot use it as a control. The practical consequence is that a small mass of heavily rotted fruit can carry enough toxin to matter in a large batch, and no amount of sound fruit dilutes the problem away.
Standards differ across traditions, and it is worth being honest about why. Farmhouse practice in the West Country, in Normandy and in the Asturian llagares historically pressed whatever the orchard gave, because the whole crop reached the ground, analytical methods did not exist, and the cider was drunk locally. Some of the character associated with those styles is genuinely a product of a broad microbial input from ground-gathered fruit — but that is the yeast and bacterial population, not the mould, and the two should not be conflated. Modern producers in every one of those regions sort, and designation schemes and food-safety regimes assume they do. Where practice still legitimately differs is in the threshold for marginal fruit: a fruit with a small dry scab lesion is a different case from one with a spreading soft rot, and how much bruised, split or blemished fruit a maker accepts is a quality decision rather than a safety one.
The commonest failure is capacity rather than judgement. A mechanical harvester or a large tipping trailer delivers fruit faster than a hand bench can inspect it, and the sort quietly degrades into a glance while the belt runs at press speed. The second failure is sorting at the wrong moment: fruit sorted on arrival and then held for weeks in a warm store arrives at the mill with a fresh crop of lesions that nobody has looked at, which is the argument for a second pass immediately before milling whenever the crop has been held. And a sorter who has been at it for six hours sees less than one who has been at it for one, which is a scheduling problem with a food-safety consequence.
Related processes
Steps that sit alongside this one, replace it, or depend on it having been done.
Juice treatment
Patulin control
Managing the mycotoxin produced by rot fungi in damaged apples, which is controlled by fruit selection rather than by any treatment applied to juice.
Harvest
Windfall management
Deciding which fruit that has reached the orchard floor can be used, and getting the rest out of the crop before it becomes a patulin problem.
Fruit preparation
Fruit washing
Removing soil, grass, stones and surface contamination from gathered fruit, usually in a water flume, before it reaches the mill.
Harvest
Fruit storage before milling
Holding a gathered crop between harvest and the mill, and managing what respiration, water loss and spoilage do to it while it waits.
Fruit preparation
Milling
Reducing whole fruit to a pulp so that the press has cell walls it can drain, rather than intact apples it can only bruise.
Harvest
Hand harvesting
Taking fruit off the tree by hand into bags and bins, so that it arrives at the store undamaged and with its stalk intact.
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 are apples milled for cider
- How do cider makers keep patulin out — By sorting rotten fruit out before milling, because patulin comes from moulds growing on damaged apples. Fermentation reduces what gets through, so fermented cider carries no limit where juice does.
- Can you fix a cider that has gone vinegary — Not really. Volatile acidity cannot be removed at small scale, and blending it away only dilutes it. The realistic options are to accept it, to blend a lightly affected batch into a much larger sound one, or to let it finish becoming vinegar.
- Can you use windfall apples for cider — Traditional cider making relies on fruit gathered from the ground, and there is nothing wrong with it if it is sound. Rotten fruit is a different matter: brown rot carries patulin into the juice and should be discarded, not pressed.
- How are cider apples picked
- How long can apples be kept before pressing
Where to go next
- How cider is made — The whole sequence, stage by stage, with the choices open at each one.
- Cider science — The chemistry and microbiology the methods on this page rest on.
- Troubleshooting — What goes wrong, how to recognise it, and whether it can be reversed.
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.
European Food Safety Authority scientific opinions
EFSA · regulator · retrieved 2026-08-24
Registered for the food-safety questions cider genuinely raises: patulin in juice from rotten fruit, sulphite sensitivity, and the toxicology behind additive limits.
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.
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.
Codex Alimentarius food standards
FAO / WHO · standards body · retrieved 2026-08-24