Tool
What do my juice readings mean?
Enter what your analysis says and this places each figure against 829 recorded measurements — each one carrying the orchard it came from, the years it covers and the source that published it.
Where a reading points towards an adjustment, this tool says what the reading means and what it puts at risk, and stops there. An addition to juice is a food-safety decision that depends on your equipment, your volume and the rules where you are — the same position the molecular SO₂ tool takes, and for the same reason.
What did you press?
This changes which readings can be interpreted. Apple and pear juice are two different populations, and the site holds different measurements of each.
Your readings
Enter what you have. Leave the rest blank — a partial analysis is interpreted as a partial analysis rather than refused.
Enter a reading to see where it sits.
What this cannot tell you about apple juice
These fields are missing rather than forgotten. Each one is a property the corpus cannot place a reading of on this fruit, and the reason is worth more than the field would be.
- Free amino nitrogen. No measurement of this property on this fruit is recorded anywhere in the corpus. The corpus does hold 37 of them, every one measured on perry pears; placing this reading against those would be comparing two different fruits.
Where the reference figures come from
Every band below is a distribution of real analyses of real fruit, and none of them is an average. The measurements are not merged, converted between units or pooled across fruits — a band is one property, in one unit, on one fruit, and the sources behind it are named so you can go and disagree with it.
Where a source is a measurement programme rather than a book or a register, its title below links to the page explaining it — what it measured, where, over how many seasons, and which of the others it may be read in one column with.
Cider apples
| Property | Recorded range | Middle half | Measurements | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Specific gravity | 1.04–1.079 SG | 1.047–1.057 (median 1.051) | 77 (29 distinct) | 4 |
| Brix | 6.5–25 °Bx | 11.7–13.6 (median 12.8) | 117 (54 distinct) | 4 |
| pH | 2.81–5.81 pH | 3.49–4.2 (median 3.68) | 135 (87 distinct) | 5 |
| Titratable acidity | 0.4–12.1 g/L | 3.1–5.4 (median 4.6) | 120 (61 distinct) | 3 |
| Total acid | 0.11–1.91 % w/v | 0.21–0.67 (median 0.33) | 169 (75 distinct) | 6 |
| Sorbitol | 0.2–33.7 g/L | 7.4–14.3 (median 10.7) | 47 (47 distinct) | 1 |
- Specific gravity — Washington State University cider research programme (45); Typical Apple Juice Analysis (NACM Short Report 4.11) (18); Caractérisation de jus de pomme à cidre et analyse comparative avec des jus de pomme commerciaux (12); Cornell Cider Research and Extension programme (2). Covering 1922–1977, 2002–2017, 2010s, 2018.
- Brix — Washington State University cider research programme (51); Characterization of Malus Genotypes within the USDA-PGRU Malus Germplasm Collection for their Potential Use within the Hard Cider Industry (47); Characterization of the Polyphenol Composition of 20 Cultivars of Cider, Processing, and Dessert Apples (Malus × domestica Borkh.) Grown in Virginia (17); Cornell Cider Research and Extension programme (2). Covering 2002–2017, 2010s, 2012–2013, 2017.
- pH — Characterization of Malus Genotypes within the USDA-PGRU Malus Germplasm Collection for their Potential Use within the Hard Cider Industry (47); Washington State University cider research programme (46); Characterization of the Polyphenol Composition of 20 Cultivars of Cider, Processing, and Dessert Apples (Malus × domestica Borkh.) Grown in Virginia (17); Typical Apple Juice Analysis (NACM Short Report 4.11) (13); Caractérisation de jus de pomme à cidre et analyse comparative avec des jus de pomme commerciaux (12). Covering 1922–1977, 2002–2017, 2010s, 2012–2013, 2017, 2018.
- Titratable acidity — Denominación de Origen Protegida Sidra de Asturias (56); Characterization of Malus Genotypes within the USDA-PGRU Malus Germplasm Collection for their Potential Use within the Hard Cider Industry (47); Characterization of the Polyphenol Composition of 20 Cultivars of Cider, Processing, and Dessert Apples (Malus × domestica Borkh.) Grown in Virginia (17). Covering 2012–2013, 2017, Published characterisation, retrieved 2026-08-24.
- Total acid — Washington State University cider research programme (51); Cider Apple Compositional Data (43); Long Ashton Research Station cider fruit analyses (36); Cornell Cider Research and Extension programme (20); Typical Apple Juice Analysis (NACM Short Report 4.11) (18); A Somerset Pomona: The Cider Apples of Somerset (1). Covering 1905–1975, 1922–1977, 2002–2017, 2010s, Long Ashton analyses, 1903–1985, Long Ashton-era analyses as compiled in later West Country pomology.
- Sorbitol — Characterization of Malus Genotypes within the USDA-PGRU Malus Germplasm Collection for their Potential Use within the Hard Cider Industry (47). Covering 2017.
Perry pears
| Property | Recorded range | Middle half | Measurements | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Specific gravity | 1.044–1.07 SG | 1.052–1.062 (median 1.058) | 61 (25 distinct) | 2 |
| Titratable acidity | 1.4–13.6 g/L | 4.2–7.2 (median 5.4) | 66 (48 distinct) | 3 |
| Free amino nitrogen | 1–70.6 mg/L | 11.6–38.3 (median 21.4) | 37 (35 distinct) | 1 |
- Specific gravity — Perry Pears and Perry — Research and Survey Work (42); Perry Pear Varieties from Long Ashton (NACM Short Report 8.2) (19). Covering 1903–1963, 2022, 2022–2024, 2024.
- Titratable acidity — Perry Pears and Perry — Research and Survey Work (37); Perry Pear Varieties from Long Ashton (NACM Short Report 8.2) (19); Prüfung ausgewählter Mostbirnensorten als Spindel unter Bio-Produktionsbedingungen (10). Covering 1903–1963, 2008, 2022, 2022–2024, 2024.
- Free amino nitrogen — Perry Pears and Perry — Research and Survey Work (37). Covering 2022, 2022–2024, 2024.
How to read a placement
The middle half is not a target. It is where half the recorded measurements fall, which is a statement about the fruit that has been analysed and not about the fruit you should have. A reading in the lowest quarter is unusual; it is not wrong, and a great deal of good cider has been made from juice at both ends.
The distributions are not populations. They are the fruit somebody chose to analyse — heavily weighted towards named cider cultivars in research collections, and almost silent on the mixed orchard and the garden tree. If you pressed dessert apples from a hedge, the bands are the wrong comparison and the reading is still a reading.
A band from one source is one laboratory. Where that is the case the tool says so on the result rather than in a footnote, because one source is one set of methods, one region and one period, and a placement against it is indicative of that programme’s fruit rather than of the fruit in general.
Two figures can be right and still disagree. A Long Ashton analysis from the 1930s and a Washington State analysis from 2015 are not two attempts at the same number. The spread between the sources behind a band is real variation between orchards, seasons and laboratories — which is why CiderHQ stores a measurement with its context and never merges two, and why a laboratory figure and a cellar reading are not the same kind of number.
Next
- Planning a batch — where these readings are taken, and what to decide before the yeast goes in rather than halfway down.
- Potential alcohol — what a starting gravity implies for strength, and why sorbitol makes that arithmetic optimistic for perry.
- Molecular SO₂ — the pH relationship this tool keeps raising, worked out properly.
- Fermentation problems — what a ferment that stalls or smells of sulphur is telling you, once it has already happened.
- Blend explorer — where a high-pH, low-acid juice is usually headed.