Style
Still cider
Cider with no perceptible dissolved carbon dioxide, presented as a fermented fruit drink whose texture rests on body, acid and tannin alone.
- Family
- Defined by carbonation
- Sweetness
- Made across the range
- Carbonation
- Still
- Strength
- 4–8% ABV
- Serve at
- 10–14 °C
- Where
- Made in several countries
Several jurisdictions draw a line between still and sparkling cider for tax or packaging purposes by measuring pressure or dissolved carbon dioxide, and the lines differ. Nothing defines still by taste, and a cider can sit legally on the still side of a threshold while a drinker perceives a faint prickle.
What makes it this style
- No perceptible carbonation: the cider is packaged and served without dissolved gas contributing to texture.
- Any secondary fermentation has completed and been allowed to vent, or the cider has been packaged in a container that does not hold pressure.
- Texture is carried by body, tannin and acid, since there is no bubble to lift the palate.
- Where a jurisdiction sets a carbon-dioxide threshold for duty purposes, the cider falls below it.
What varies inside the category
Every style covers a range. This is what legitimately differs between two examples that are both correctly called by this name.
- Everything except carbonation. Still is a single attribute and says nothing about sweetness, fruit, origin or method.
- Whether stillness is intentional or simply the result of packaging in bag-in-box or a vented cask.
- Serving temperature convention: still West Country cider is traditionally served near cellar temperature, while still modern ciders are often chilled harder.
- Oxidative character, which rises faster in still cider because there is no carbon dioxide blanket protecting the surface.
Sensory profile
Scored as bands rather than points, because the category genuinely covers a range and a single figure would claim a precision it does not have.
| Dimension | Typical | Range | Variation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sweetness | Dry | Highly variable | |
| Acidity | Moderate | Some variation | |
| Bitterness | Slight | Highly variable | |
| Tannin | Moderate | Highly variable | |
| Astringency | Slight | Highly variable | |
| Body | Medium | Highly variable | |
| Carbonation | Still | Consistent | |
| Alcohol | Moderate | Some variation | |
| Freshness | Settled | Some variation | |
| Fruit character | Present | Some variation | |
| Phenolic character | Trace | Highly variable | |
| Fermentation character | Restrained | Highly variable | |
| Oxidative character | Trace | Highly variable |
What you are likely to smell and taste
Each descriptor links to what actually produces it.
About Still cider
Stillness was the norm for most of cider’s history for the simple reason that holding pressure is difficult. A cask breathes, a wooden vat breathes, and a cider drawn from either has vented whatever gas its fermentation produced long before anyone drinks it. Sparkling cider required either a strong glass bottle and a reliable cork — a seventeenth-century innovation that English writers were proud of — or, much later, industrial pressure vessels. Still cider is what cider is when nobody is working to keep the gas in.
Removing carbonation from the equation changes what a cider has to do. Bubbles carry aroma to the nose, scrub the palate between mouthfuls and add an apparent acidity and lift that is really a tactile sensation. A still cider has none of that help. It must have enough body, tannin or residual sugar to give the mouth something to hold, or it reads as thin and flat in a way the same liquid would not if it were carbonated. This is why still cider is most convincing in traditions built on tannic fruit, and least convincing when made from low-tannin dessert apples and fermented out.
Stillness also alters the ageing trajectory. Dissolved carbon dioxide is mildly protective, and a still cider in a partly emptied vessel oxidises faster than a sparkling one in a sealed bottle. That is not always a problem: several traditions treat controlled oxidation as part of the character they are aiming at, and a still farmhouse cider that has picked up a little acetaldehyde and a nutty edge is behaving as expected rather than deteriorating. The line between that and genuine oxidation fault is a matter of degree and of what the tradition has agreed to accept.
The category exists on this site because carbonation is one of the two axes that a drinker can perceive immediately and that cuts across every regional tradition. Still cider is made in Somerset, in Asturias, in Hesse and in Vermont, and each of those is a different drink. What the label tells a reader is exactly one thing: nothing will fizz.
Tasting it
What to attend to here specifically, and what is routinely misread. The second list is the more useful one.
What to look for
- What is exposed by the absence of gas. Carbonation lifts aroma, sharpens acid and masks a thin body; a still cider has none of that help and every structural weakness is visible.
- The texture, which is the point of the category. Still cider is where body, glycerol and tannin do the work that bubbles do elsewhere.
- How the aroma arrives. Without gas to carry volatiles out of the liquid, a still cider needs warmth and a glass that concentrates.
What gets misread
- Reading flatness as a fault. A still cider is not an under-carbonated sparkling one, and the two are different products rather than two points on a scale.
- Assessing it too cold. Cold plus no carbonation leaves very little aroma reaching the nose at all.
A stemmed glass with a narrowing bowl, and warmer than you would serve a sparkling cider — 10–14 °C. There is no gas to carry the aroma, so the glass has to.
What it is mistaken for, and how to tell
One observation per pair, chosen because it separates them. Several of these are not styles at all — a commercial term, a legal category, or a fault wearing the same description.
- A cider that has lost its carbonation — Intent, and the deposit. A still cider was never carbonated; an under-carbonated one usually has a sediment and a closure that tells the story.
- Pétillant cider — Whether a prickle appears at all after a minute in the glass. A pétillant cider has gas at a level a still one does not.
How it is made
The methods that define or commonly produce this style.
Tank maturation
Resting cider in stainless steel or a lined vessel, where the point of the container is that it contributes nothing and admits almost no oxygen.
Racking
Moving cider off the sediment it has thrown, which both cleans the liquid and — by taking yeast and nitrogen away with the deposit — slows what is left of the ferment.
Bag-in-box
A collapsing laminate bladder in a card outer, the standard farmgate and draught format, which keeps air out during dispense but lets oxygen through the film over weeks.
Barrel ageing
Holding cider in wood — which may mean an old neutral vat used simply as a vessel, or fresh or spirit-seasoned oak used as a source of flavour, and the two are not the same operation.
Blending
Combining separate lots of cider or perry into one, which in cider is the historically normal way of making the drink rather than a remedy applied when single lots disappoint.
What can go wrong
Faults this style is particularly exposed to, given how it is made.
Oxidation
The cumulative effect of oxygen on finished cider: fruit aroma flattens, colour deepens towards amber, and a bruised-apple or sherry-like character replaces the fresh one.
Flat and lifeless
A cider with nothing obviously wrong and nothing to say: aroma faded, acidity dulled, finish short — usually the cumulative result of over-processing or slow oxidation.
Acetaldehyde excess
A bruised-apple, green-nut or sherry aroma from acetaldehyde, produced by oxidation, by film yeast, or left behind by a ferment that was interrupted.
Related styles
Pétillant cider
Lightly carbonated cider in which the gas is felt as a prickle rather than a stream of bubbles, the level most traditional bottle fermentation reaches on its own.
Sparkling cider
Cider carrying enough dissolved carbon dioxide to produce a persistent bubble, by bottle fermentation, tank fermentation or injection.
Traditional draught cider
Cider dispensed from cask, bag-in-box or gravity without added gas, in the form that British cider has historically been drunk in pubs and at the farm gate.
West Country farmhouse cider
Cider made on the farm from tannic bittersweet fruit, wild-fermented in wood and sold still and unfiltered, in a tradition whose variability is one of its defining features.
Still perry
Perry without carbonation, in which the fruit’s sorbitol sweetness and its texture carry a drink that has no bubble to lean on.
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.
- What is traditional draught cider — Still or lightly conditioned cider served from a cask or a bag-in-box rather than under gas pressure, so whatever sparkle it has came from its own fermentation. It is the format most West Country farmhouse cider is sold in.
- How do you blend cider
- What is oxidation in cider
- What is racking in cider making — Racking is siphoning cider off the sediment it has thrown into a clean vessel, leaving the lees behind. It clarifies the cider and, in traditional practice, is also used to slow a ferment by removing yeast with the lees.
- Is a bruised apple character in cider a fault — The brown, soft, faintly sweet note of enzymatic browning, met wherever apple tissue or juice has met air.
- Does carbonation change how cider tastes — Yes. Dissolved carbon dioxide forms carbonic acid, so a sparkling cider tastes sharper than the same cider still, and the bubbles carry aroma upwards and scrub fat from the palate.
Where to go next
- All styles — The full range, grouped by what defines each one.
- Sweetness decoder — What the word on the label means, in the system that defines it.
- Serving — Temperature, glass and how to open it without losing half of 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.
CAMRA cider and perry standards
Campaign for Real Ale · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24
Opened on 2026-08-24. Registered for the consumer-campaigning vocabulary — "real cider", "full juice" — which is advocacy language rather than legal definition, and is recorded as such wherever CiderHQ uses it.
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.
National Association of Cider Makers
NACM · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24
The UK trade association. Useful for industry-agreed definitions and for the voluntary labelling standards its members work to. A trade body has an interest in how its product is described, so CiderHQ cites it for what the industry says about itself rather than for neutral scientific claims.
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.