Dataset

The Geneva finished-cider analyses

The only dataset on the site measured on finished cider rather than on juice, which makes it the clearest demonstration of why that distinction is not pedantry.

Is a tannin figure for cider the same as a tannin figure for juice?

No, and this dataset is where the site can show it. Cider made from fruit grown at Geneva, New York in the late 1970s was analysed for acid, pH and tannin, and the tannin figures run at about half the Long Ashton juice figures for the same cultivars.

The compiler noticed and offered three explanations — the season, the growing conditions, or a different analytical method — without being able to separate them. A fourth is that fermentation, fining and time remove phenolic material, and that a juice figure and a cider figure were never measuring the same liquid.

The programme

Transcribed from the source as published. Nothing in this panel is CiderHQ’s wording.

Site: New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, Geneva, New York
Period: late 1970s
Cultivars transcribed: 17
Measurements: 63
Values withheld: 1 — see limitations
Classifies under: No classification scheme

Climate. Humid continental, with a hotter summer and a colder winter than any European cider region. The compiler suggests the growing conditions may be part of why the phenolic figures sit so far below the English ones, and is careful not to claim it.

Method. Analysis of finished cider after a spontaneous fermentation. Acid by titration as malic; pH by meter; tannin by an unstated method; fruit weight as a mean. The data appear to come from a single season, and the original work was unpublished.

What the source says about itself

Reaches CiderHQ through two hands: unpublished 1980 work by a station staff member, printed in a 1989 food-technology chapter, transcribed onto a specialist website. CiderHQ has opened the transcription only. The Brix column and the Tremlett’s Bitter row are withheld, for reasons recorded against each.

One cultivar, four measurement programmes, four sets of numbers — and the fourth is not a juice analysis at all. This is why CiderHQ never averages across studies.

Described in full

Shape: Four stacked panels, one per programme, each naming the place, the period and the substrate that was analysed. Within each panel the figures that programme published for Kingston Black are listed with their units. The fourth panel is set apart by a dashed border and a heading that reads "finished cider, not juice".
WSU Mount Vernon, Skagit Valley, Washington, 2002–2017, juice: pH 3.51, total acid 0.61% w/v, total tannin 0.15% w/v, specific gravity 1.055, 13.3 °Bx. A maritime North American site chosen as the closest analogue to the English West Country, averaged across the seasons the cultivar was in trial.
USDA-PGRU Geneva, New York, 2017, juice: pH 4.23, titratable acidity 2.1 g/L, total phenolics 1,080 mg/L, 12.5 °Bx. One season, one harvest, in a continental climate with hotter summers and colder winters than the Skagit Valley. The pH is 0.72 units above the Mount Vernon figure for the same cultivar.
Long Ashton, Somerset, 1905–1975, juice: Total acid 0.58% w/v, total tannin 0.20% w/v. A seventy-year composite from the station whose figures underlie the English classification. Its tannin figure is a third higher than Mount Vernon’s for the same fruit.
Geneva, New York, late 1970s, finished cider: Finished pH 3.56, finished total acid 0.58% w/v, finished total tannin 0.062% w/v. Set apart because it is a different quantity with the same name: fermentation, fining and time remove phenolic material, so this tannin figure is roughly a third of the Long Ashton juice figure and cannot be read as disagreeing with it.
What the figure argues: The pH spread across the three juice analyses is 3.51 to 4.23, which is large enough to change what a maker would do about it, and none of the three is an error. A measurement is a statement about a fruit and a place and a season and a method. Averaging the four would produce a number that no orchard ever grew and no laboratory ever measured.

What it adds

It is the site’s only finished-cider chemistry, and CiderHQ stores it under distinct measurement properties — finished total acid, finished tannin, finished pH — so that the comparison engine physically cannot place a Geneva reading in one column with a Somerset juice reading.
Fruit weight is the deliberate exception and is stored as an ordinary fruit measurement, because what an apple weighs is a fact about the apple whatever was later done to its juice.
It corroborates a misidentification from an independent direction: the compiler calls the Tremlett’s Bitter figures frankly unbelievable and reports that the material circulating in the United States under that name is not the English fruit — the same failure WSU documents for its own accession.

What it cannot be asked

Stated as limits rather than as apology. A dataset with known bounds is more useful than one presented as complete.

Seventeen cultivars, one site, one period, and the source does not give the number of seasons.
The Brix column is not published here. The source describes the table as analysis of finished cider after a natural fermentation, and a naturally fermented cider does not read 10 to 17 °Bx — those are juice numbers. One of the two statements is wrong and the source does not let a reader tell which, so the column is recorded as unpublishable rather than filed under either substrate.
The Tremlett’s Bitter row is withheld entirely, for the identity reason above.

Why these figures are not universal

A finished cider is the product of a fruit, a season, a site and a fermentation, and this dataset varies all four from anything else on the site. Its figures describe what those ciders contained after they were made, which is a different question from what the juice contained before — and a reader wanting to know what a cultivar’s juice measures should not look here at all.

What was measured

Every property in the transcription, with how many cultivars carry it. A property measured on some cultivars and not others is a gap in the source, not in the transcription.

Properties recorded across 17 cultivars in The Geneva finished-cider analyses
Property	Cultivars	Reported in
Fruit weight	16	Grams
Total acid (finished cider)	16	Percent weight per volume
pH (finished cider)	16	pH
Total tannin (finished cider)	15	Percent weight per volume

Total tannin (finished cider) across every cultivar in this dataset that carries it — 15 of them, from 0.169 down to 0.040 % w/v. Every figure here comes from this one programme, measured by one method in one place, which is the only arrangement under which a comparison like this is sound. Nothing on this chart may be read against another dataset’s column.
Cultivar	Total tannin (finished cider) (% w/v)	Where it sits in this study’s range
Amère de Berthecourt	0.169
Dabinett	0.112
Nehou	0.106
Yarlington Mill	0.102
Roxbury Russet	0.064
Kingston Black	0.062
Baldwin	0.059
Winesap	0.054
Northern Spy	0.048
Jonathan	0.046
Democrat	0.044
Golden Delicious	0.043
Golden Russet	0.042
Idared	0.041
Newtown Pippin	0.040

Ordering only. Where a figure was published as a range the midpoint is used to place the row, and the range itself — not the midpoint — is what appears on the cultivar’s own page.

What it can be read beside

The commonest way to misuse this corpus is not to misread one figure but to put two side by side that were never measuring the same thing. This is the judgement, stated.

Whether The Geneva finished-cider analyses may be read in one column with the site’s other datasets
Dataset	Verdict	Why
Everything else on the site	Not comparable	Nothing on this site can be read in the same column as these figures except fruit weight. That is the point of the dataset rather than a defect in it.
The Long Ashton cider apple table	Not comparable	The comparison that looks most tempting and is most wrong. The cultivars match, the units match, and the substrate does not.

Where a dataset is not listed, no judgement has been recorded and the safe reading is that the two have not been checked against each other. CiderHQ never averages across studies: how evidence is handled sets out why.

Cultivars in this dataset

Each carries this programme’s figures on its own page, alongside whatever else has measured it.

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.

Cornell Cider Research and Extension programme
Cornell University, School of Integrative Plant Science · university · passage verified 2026-08-24
Runs cultivar trials in New York State and publishes juice chemistry for European cider varieties grown in a North American climate — the single most useful counterweight to treating English figures as universal.