Sensory descriptor
Pressed apple juice
The full, sweet, unfermented smell of fresh juice, met in cider where residual sugar and surviving fruit esters combine.
Also called Fresh juice, Sweet juice.
- Aroma family
- Fresh apple
- Does it indicate a fault?
- No — a normal part of cider and perry aroma
What causes it
Fresh juice carries the cut-tissue aldehydes together with the full complement of esters the fruit accumulated during ripening — hexyl acetate, butyl acetate, 2-methylbutyl acetate — and unfermented glucose and fructose. In a finished cider this composite is reconstructed rather than preserved: it requires residual sugar, whether from an arrested ferment, keeving or back-sweetening, sitting alongside fruit esters that survived processing. That is why it is a common note in keeved French cider and in commercially back-sweetened cider, and rare in a fully dry wild ferment.
The compounds responsible
Where the molecule is established. Some descriptors in this lexicon name a compound the compound register does not yet hold a record for; those are named in the cause above instead.
Glucose
The sugar yeast takes first and the smallest of the three in apple juice, which is why the last sugar left in a slow ferment is almost never glucose.
Fructose
The dominant sugar of apple juice and the sweetest of the common sugars, which is why apple juice tastes sweeter than its total sugar figure implies and why a stuck ferment leaves sweetness behind.
Hexyl acetate
The apple-skin and pear ester that is genuinely carried in from the fruit rather than made by the yeast, and one of the few fresh-fruit aromas that survives fermentation.
Hexanal
The green-apple aldehyde generated within seconds of breaking fruit tissue, which gives fresh juice its cut-grass smell and is largely converted away by the yeast.
What raises it
Processes that increase this character, or preserve it where it would otherwise be lost.
Keeving
Forming a floating pectin gel that lifts nutrients and solids out of the juice, so that the ferment starves before it finishes and leaves natural sweetness behind.
Arrested fermentation
Deliberately halting a ferment while sugar remains, to obtain natural sweetness from the fruit rather than from an addition — and accepting the instability that follows.
Back-sweetening
Adding sugar, juice or concentrate to a cider that has fermented dry — a straightforward adjustment that leaves the drink microbiologically unstable until something is done about it.
Sterile filtration
Membrane filtration at a rating that retains viable yeast and bacteria, which is what allows a sweet cider to be shelf-stable without heat or preservative — provided the filling that follows is aseptic.
Where it is usually met
Fruit and styles this character is recorded in. A record here is where the descriptor is commonly found, not a claim that every example shows it.
About Pressed apple juice
The descriptor is worth having because it names the target of an entire production tradition. Keeving exists to arrest fermentation with sugar still in the liquid and fruit aroma still intact, and a successful keeved cider is judged partly on how close it comes to smelling of the juice it was made from at an alcohol level that says otherwise.
It should not be used for a cider that is simply sweet. Sweetness without fruit aroma reads as syrup or as sugar-water and is a different observation entirely; the point of this descriptor is the coincidence of the two.
Others in the fresh apple family
Crisp, green, just-cut apple and apple skin.
Fresh-cut apple
The smell of a cut apple surface, produced within seconds of the fruit tissue being broken by six-carbon aldehydes released from membrane fats.
Green apple
A harder, sharper apple note than fresh-cut apple, driven by (E)-2-hexenal and reinforced by high malic acid.
Apple skin
The dry, faintly waxy and slightly bitter aroma of the fruit’s surface rather than its flesh, carried by cuticular waxes, hexyl esters and skin-concentrated phenolics.
Apple pomace
The wet, sweet-sour smell of freshly milled and pressed pomace: cut-apple aldehydes over the first traces of wild fermentation and browning.
Crab apple
A small-fruit character combining very high acidity, hard green aldehydes and a marked phenolic grip.
Russet apple
A dry, nutty, faintly pear-like apple character associated with russeted skin and high soluble solids.
Unripe apple
A hard, starchy, low-aroma character from fruit milled before the climacteric, with acid high and esters not yet formed.
Apple core
A faintly bitter, faintly almond-like note from crushed pips and core tissue passing through the mill with the flesh.
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 do i make my cider sweeter
- How do you stop cider from fermenting — By removing the yeast, by chilling, by filtering it out, by pasteurising, or by a combination — and in practice a home maker cannot reliably stop a ferment mid-way with chemicals alone. Sorbate prevents yeast multiplying but will not stop an active ferment.
- What is keeving — Keeving is a technique for starving a ferment of nitrogen so that it stops before all the sugar is gone, leaving a naturally sweet cider. Pectin is made to gel and float as a brown cap, carrying nutrients and yeast out of the juice with it.
- What is keeved cider — A cider made naturally sweet by starving the yeast rather than by adding sugar. Keeving strips nutrients out of the juice before fermentation, so the ferment slows and stops with fruit sugar still in it, and nothing has been put back.
- What is sweet cider in america — In the United States and Canada, sweet cider means fresh, unfermented, usually unfiltered apple juice, with no alcohol in it. In Britain the same phrase means a fermented cider with residual sugar.
- Which sugar is most of the sugar in apple juice — Fructose, by a long way. Apple juice carries roughly twice as much fructose as glucose, with a smaller amount of sucrose, and fructose is the sweetest of the three on the tongue.
Where to go next
- The sensory model — The thirteen structural dimensions and the twenty aroma families, in full.
- Compounds — The chemistry behind the words.
- Troubleshooting — When a perception turns out to be a problem, this is where it is diagnosed.
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.
Institut Français des Productions Cidricoles (IFPC)
IFPC · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
The French technical institute for cider production. The authority for the French cultivar classification families, for keeving as an industrial process, and for the pectin and nitrogen chemistry that keeving depends on.
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.
The New Cider Maker’s Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide for Craft Producers
Claude Jolicoeur, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2013. ISBN 9781603584739 · reference work · bibliographic record verified, not opened 2026-08-25
Bibliographic record verified on 2026-08-25 against the Open Library union catalogue: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2013, ISBN 9781603584739, one edition recorded. That establishes the citation points at a real book in a stated edition, which is what a citation needs and is all it establishes. No copy was opened and nothing is quoted from it. The book itself is in print and not digitised in any open collection; where CiderHQ needs a figure from this territory it uses an accessible research source instead and says so.