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Sensory

The cider sensory model

Tasting notes are lists of nouns. This section is the attempt to make the list mean something, by requiring that every word states the molecule, the organism or the process that produces it.

CiderHQ treats tasting as sensory intelligence rather than as description. A descriptor here is not a suggestion about what you might find; it is a statement that a particular perception has a particular cause, and it carries the sources for that claim. Where the cause cannot be written, the descriptor is not published — elegant, complex and well-balanced are judgements about a drinker, not observations about a drink, and none of them appears in the 138 records this section holds.

Two structures do the work, and keeping them apart matters. The first is a set of structural dimensions — sweetness, acidity, tannin, body — scored one to five as bands rather than points, because a category like Somerset farmhouse cider genuinely covers a range and a single number would claim a precision it does not have. The second is an ontology of aroma families, each tied where possible to the compound or process behind it. A cider is described by where it sits on the first and what it shows from the second.

Nothing in this section tells you whether to enjoy what you find. A page states a perception and its cause; whether a note is welcome depends on the style it is met in and on the person meeting it, and both of those are outside what evidence can settle.

The twenty aroma familiesEvery aroma family CiderHQ classifies descriptors into, in the order the sensory model lists them. Representative descriptors for each are given below.Fresh appleRipe appleCooked andbaked applePearCitrusStone fruitTropical fruitBerryFloralHoneyedSpiceHerbal and vegetalEarthyWoodyPhenolicFermentation-derivedDairy and lacticOxidativeSulphurVolatile andfault-relatedAromafamiliesusually a fault
Every aroma family CiderHQ classifies descriptors into, in the order the sensory model lists them. Representative descriptors for each are given below.
Described in full
Shape
Twenty equal sectors round a hub, read clockwise from the top. Sectors alternate in tone so the divisions are visible, and the two families that usually indicate a fault carry a filled marker at the rim as well as their own tone.
Apple and pear, sectors one to four
Fresh apple, for crisp just-cut apple and apple skin; ripe apple, for full orchard fruit; cooked and baked apple, for apple pie, stewed fruit and caramelised apple; and pear, for fresh pear, pear drop and pear skin.
Other fruit, sectors five to eight
Citrus, for lemon, grapefruit peel and lime zest; stone fruit, for peach, apricot and nectarine; tropical fruit, for pineapple, mango, banana and passion fruit; and berry, for strawberry, raspberry and red-fruit notes.
Floral and sweet, sectors nine and ten
Floral covers blossom, rose, elderflower and hawthorn — the rose note is 2-phenylethanol, a yeast product. Honeyed covers honey, beeswax and nectar, and rises with age and mild oxidation.
Spice, herbal and earthy, sectors eleven to thirteen
Spice: clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper. Herbal and vegetal: hay, grass, hedgerow, green leaf. Earthy: farmyard, wet stone, damp cellar, mushroom — welcome in traditional farmhouse cider and out of place in a clean modern one.
Wood and phenolic, sectors fourteen and fifteen
Woody covers oak, vanilla, toast, cedar and smoke, all from barrel contact. Phenolic covers leather, smoke, sticking plaster, horse and medicinal notes from ethylphenols — a traditional signature at low levels and a fault above them.
Ferment-derived, sectors sixteen to eighteen
Fermentation-derived: solvent, nail varnish, bread, yeast. Dairy and lactic: butter, butterscotch, yoghurt, cream, from diacetyl. Oxidative: sherry, walnut, bruised apple, cardboard.
The two fault families, sectors nineteen and twenty
Sulphur covers rotten egg, struck match, drains, rubber and cooked cabbage. Volatile and fault-related covers vinegar, glue and mousiness. Both are marked because encountering them usually indicates a problem rather than a style.
Why the families are not simply good or bad
Most sit in the middle: the same molecule is traditional in one style and a fault in another. Only the last two families are classed as usually a fault, and even they have thresholds below which nobody notices.

The thirteen structural dimensions

What a cider is made of, as opposed to what it smells of. Each dimension gives its definition, the physical mechanism behind it, a five-point ladder of words, and the dimensions it is routinely mistaken for.

Why five points and not a hundred

Every ladder below is five steps. That is the resolution the evidence supports for a category: trained panels distinguish a small number of levels reliably and more than that unreliably, and a hundred-point scale would be arithmetic dressed up as measurement. The words are fixed for each dimension so that the same score means the same thing on every page of this site.

Structure — what it is made of

Sweetness

How sweet the drink tastes, which is not the same as how much sugar it contains.

Where it comes from. Residual sugar — glucose, fructose and, in perry, unfermentable sorbitol — read by sweet receptors on the tongue. Acidity suppresses the perception and carbonation sharpens it, so the same sugar level tastes drier in a sharp sparkling cider than in a soft still one.

  1. Bone dry
  2. Dry
  3. Medium
  4. Sweet
  5. Very sweet

Often confused with Fruit character. Ripe apple aroma reads as sweetness to most drinkers. A completely dry cider full of fresh-apple esters is regularly described as sweet.

Structure — what it is made of

Acidity

The sharp, mouth-watering quality that makes a cider taste fresh rather than flat.

Where it comes from. Chiefly malic acid from the fruit, plus lactic acid where malolactic fermentation has run and acetic acid where spoilage has. Perceived sourness tracks titratable acidity more closely than pH, though pH is what governs microbial risk.

  1. Very low
  2. Low
  3. Moderate
  4. High
  5. Very high

Often confused with Freshness. Acidity is a taste; freshness is an overall impression that acidity contributes to alongside carbonation and low oxidation.

Structure — what it is made of

Bitterness

A taste sensed at the back of the tongue, distinct from the drying grip of astringency.

Where it comes from. Lower-molecular-weight procyanidins and other polyphenols binding bitter receptors. In cider apples it rises with the bittersweet and bittersharp classes and falls sharply in dessert fruit.

  1. None
  2. Slight
  3. Moderate
  4. Marked
  5. Dominant

Often confused with Astringency. Bitterness is a taste on the tongue; astringency is a tactile drying felt across the whole mouth. Cider apples deliver both, in ratios that differ by cultivar.

Structure — what it is made of

Tannin

The phenolic material that gives cider structure, grip and ageing capacity.

Where it comes from. Condensed tannins — procyanidins built from catechin and epicatechin units — extracted from skin and flesh during milling and maceration. Chain length decides the split between bitterness and astringency: shorter oligomers taste bitter, longer polymers bind salivary proteins and dry the mouth.

  1. Negligible
  2. Light
  3. Moderate
  4. Firm
  5. Heavy

Texture — how it feels

Astringency

The drying, rough sensation left after swallowing.

Where it comes from. Long-chain tannins precipitating salivary proline-rich proteins, which removes the lubricating film from the mouth. It is a mechanical sensation rather than a taste, and it builds across repeated sips rather than fading.

  1. None
  2. Slight
  3. Noticeable
  4. Drying
  5. Harsh

Texture — how it feels

Body

How much weight and viscosity the drink has in the mouth.

Where it comes from. Contributed by residual sugar, glycerol from fermentation, unfermented polysaccharides and alcohol. Cider carries less than wine because apple juice starts with less sugar, so small differences read as large.

  1. Very light
  2. Light
  3. Medium
  4. Full
  5. Very full

Texture — how it feels

Carbonation

How much dissolved carbon dioxide the drink carries, from perfectly still to fully sparkling.

Where it comes from. Dissolved CO2 both fizzes mechanically and forms carbonic acid on the tongue, which is why a sparkling cider tastes sharper than the same liquid poured flat. Achieved by retaining fermentation gas, by conditioning in bottle or tank, or by injection.

  1. Still
  2. Slight prickle
  3. Pétillant
  4. Sparkling
  5. Highly sparkling

Structure — what it is made of

Alcohol

The warming, slightly sweet presence of ethanol.

Where it comes from. Ethanol produced from fruit sugar. Most traditional cider sits between roughly 4% and 8.5% ABV because apple juice rarely carries more sugar than that; ice ciders and apple wines exceed it by concentration or addition.

  1. Very low
  2. Low
  3. Moderate
  4. High
  5. Very high

Aroma — what it smells and tastes of

Freshness

Whether the drink smells and tastes of live fruit or of time and air.

Where it comes from. High where fruit esters survive and oxidation is low; falls as acetaldehyde, sotolon-type ageing compounds and browning products accumulate.

  1. Fully oxidised
  2. Aged
  3. Settled
  4. Fresh
  5. Very fresh

Aroma — what it smells and tastes of

Fruit character

How strongly the drink smells of apple or pear, and of fruit generally.

Where it comes from. Fruit-derived aldehydes and alcohols plus fermentation esters. Cool ferments and neutral yeasts preserve it; warm ferments and long maturation replace it with other things.

  1. Absent
  2. Faint
  3. Present
  4. Pronounced
  5. Dominant

Aroma — what it smells and tastes of

Phenolic character

Smoky, spicy, leathery or medicinal aromas that sit apart from fruit.

Where it comes from. Volatile phenols — chiefly 4-ethylphenol and 4-ethylguaiacol — produced when Brettanomyces or certain lactic bacteria decarboxylate and reduce hydroxycinnamic acids. Traditional in some styles and a fault in others; the same molecule, judged against different expectations.

  1. None
  2. Trace
  3. Noticeable
  4. Marked
  5. Dominant

Aroma — what it smells and tastes of

Fermentation character

Aromas made by the ferment rather than carried in from the fruit.

Where it comes from. Higher alcohols, acetate and ethyl esters, and diacetyl-family compounds, whose balance is set by yeast population, nitrogen supply and temperature.

  1. Clean and neutral
  2. Restrained
  3. Evident
  4. Strong
  5. Dominant

Aroma — what it smells and tastes of

Oxidative character

Nutty, bruised-apple, sherry-like or cardboard notes from exposure to air.

Where it comes from. Phenolic oxidation coupled to acetaldehyde formation. Controlled exposure gives the depth traditional Spanish and some English ciders are known for; uncontrolled exposure gives the flat, papery fault.

  1. None
  2. Trace
  3. Evident
  4. Marked
  5. Dominant

The twenty aroma families

Every descriptor is filed under one family, and each family states where its aromas come from. Whether a family indicates a problem is given as one of three answers, because for most of them the honest answer is that it depends on the style.

The same word, two causes

A word can appear in two families with two different causes, and both are correct. Smoke from a charred barrel is furfural and guaiacol out of the wood; smoke from Brettanomyces is 4-ethylguaiacol made from ferulic acid. A drinker meets one word. A cider maker has two entirely different problems, and only the second of them is reversible.

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