Fault
Plastic and packaging taint
Plastic, rubber, adhesive or chemical notes picked up from unsuitable containers, liners, hoses, gaskets or cleaning residues.
Also called plastic taint, container taint.
- Severity
- Quality — the drink is worse for it
- Where it starts
- Storage, Maturation, Packaging
- Can it be fixed?
- Yes, if caught in time
- When you notice it
- Maturation, Packaging, Storage
- Signs
- 5 recorded
What it is
Packaging taint covers a family of off-characters that reach cider from what it is stored, moved or sealed in rather than from anything biological. Unsuitable plastics leach; hoses and gaskets contribute rubber and sulphur notes; adhesives, printing inks and treated cardboard taint through the air and through a closure liner; and cleaning products leave residues. The compounds differ, and the practical signature is the same: a chemical note that has nothing to do with fruit.
What you notice
Grouped by sense, because that is how the fault presents itself rather than how it works.
On the nose
- A plastic, vinyl or new-shower-curtain smell
- A rubbery or hose-like note, particularly after a transfer
- A solvent, adhesive or marker-pen character
On the palate
- A chemical, soapy or detergent-like taste — Soapiness points to cleaning residue rather than to the container.
How the batch behaves
- The character appearing after a change of container, hose or closure — The most useful diagnostic: what changed immediately before the taint appeared.
The words for it: Plastic. Each links to what produces it.
When it appears. After contact with the material responsible, and it can arrive at any point where a hose, seal, liner or container was introduced.
It is diagnosed by elimination against the equipment rather than by sensory analysis, and the practical test is to fill a clean glass with water from the suspected component and smell it — which identifies the source in a way that tasting the cider cannot.
Peter Mitchell / Cider and Perry Academy
What it is mistaken for, and how to tell
One observation per rival, chosen because it separates them rather than because it describes either. Several of these are not faults at all — a style feature, a normal outcome, or the fruit behaving as it does.
- Mercaptan taint — A rubber note from a mercaptan comes with other sulphur character; a packaging taint arrives alone and is traceable to a component.
- Cork taint — Whether it affects the whole batch. A liner or hose taints everything that passed through it.
- A new hose or vessel that has not been rinsed — Run water through it and smell that. The commonest source is a component in its first use.
What is actually happening
The chemistry or microbiology behind it. Understanding the mechanism is what makes the prevention make sense rather than being a list of rules.
Plastics are not chemically inert. Polymers intended for food contact are formulated and tested to limit migration, and plastics not intended for it are not. Containers made for water storage, chemical use or general purpose can transfer plasticisers, residual monomers, antioxidants and processing aids into an acidic, ethanol-containing liquid, and ethanol is a considerably more aggressive solvent than water.
Styrene is a specific and recognised case. Polystyrene contains residual styrene monomer, which is transferred readily into ethanol-containing liquids and carries a plastic, slightly sweet, solvent-like odour. Cider should not be stored in polystyrene at all.
Rubber and elastomer components — hoses, gaskets, bungs, tap seals — contribute their own compounds, and perished or heat-damaged rubber contributes considerably more than new material. Sulphur compounds from vulcanisation are a common contributor and are easily mistaken for a fermentation sulphur fault.
Cleaning products are the fourth route, and they act by two mechanisms: direct residue left in a vessel that was not rinsed, and formation of new compounds. Chlorine-based products meeting phenolic material can produce chlorophenols, which moulds convert to the intensely musty chloroanisoles. That is the same chemistry that produces cork taint, arriving by a domestic route.
How it happens
| Cause | Stage | How often |
|---|---|---|
| Containers not intended for food use, or intended for water rather than for alcohol | Storage | common |
| Perished or unsuitable hoses, gaskets and bungs | Maturation | common |
| Cleaning product residue from inadequate rinsing | Packaging | common |
| Chlorine-based sanitisers producing chlorophenols in a cellar with wood or phenolic material | Maturation | occasional |
| Closure liners, printing inks, adhesives or treated cardboard in contact with the bottles | Packaging | occasional |
| Bag-in-box liners or taps of unsuitable specification | Packaging | occasional |
Can it be put right?
Most cider faults cannot be reversed. Where that is the answer it is given plainly — an honest 'this batch is what it is' is more useful than a procedure that will not work.
| Option | Effectiveness | What it involves |
|---|---|---|
| Identify what changed and eliminate it | Reliable | The taint is a source problem, and the source is nearly always a specific item introduced shortly before it appeared. Finding it protects everything else in the cellar. |
| Move the cider to a sound container immediately | Partial | Stops the transfer continuing. Useful only if the taint is caught early, since migration is time-dependent and further exposure makes it worse. |
| Blend into a larger clean volume | Unlikely to work | Depends entirely on the compound and its threshold. Usually disappointing. |
| Fine with activated carbon | Unlikely to work | Adsorbs some of these compounds along with most of the cider’s aroma. Rarely produces a drink worth having. |
| Remove the taint from the cider | Not possible | These compounds are dissolved and generally have low thresholds. Nothing available removes them selectively. |
CiderHQ gives no additive dosage figures. An addition is a food-safety decision that depends on legal limits, on the juice in front of you and on what you are protecting against, and the right figure comes from your supplier’s or regulator’s own guidance rather than from a general reference.
Preventing it
- Use only containers, hoses and fittings specified for food contact with alcoholic liquids, and keep the documentation that says so.
- Never store cider in polystyrene, in containers of unknown provenance, or in anything that previously held something else.
- Replace hoses and gaskets on a schedule rather than when they fail, and inspect them for perishing and cracking.
- Rinse thoroughly after cleaning, and use no-rinse products only as their instructions direct.
- Keep chlorine-based sanitisers away from wood and phenolic material.
- Store bottles away from strong-smelling materials, since a closure liner is not an absolute barrier.
Packaging taint is the fault most likely to affect a home producer who has done everything else right, because it comes from equipment rather than from technique. A carefully fermented, carefully racked, carefully bottled cider stored in the wrong plastic drum is a spoiled cider.
The diagnostic method is chronological rather than sensory. These taints appear when something is introduced, so the question is always what is new: a hose, a barrel, a batch of bungs, a different cleaning product, a container that was pressed into service because the usual one was full.
Ethanol is the reason food-grade specification matters more here than in the kitchen. Ethanol extracts compounds from polymers that water does not, so a container that is entirely suitable for storing water may not be suitable for cider, and the same is true of hoses and seals.
The chlorine route deserves separate attention because it produces the worst outcome from the most conscientious behaviour. A maker sanitising thoroughly with a chlorine-based product in a cellar containing oak can create the precursors of a musty taint indistinguishable from cork taint. Choosing a different class of sanitiser removes the risk entirely.
The compounds involved
Sulphur dioxide
The antimicrobial and antioxidant on which most modern cidermaking depends, and whose effectiveness collapses as pH rises — which makes every sulphiting decision a pH decision first.
Mercaptans
What hydrogen sulphide becomes if it is left alone: onion, garlic and rubber notes that are far harder to remove than the gas they came from.
Total phenolics
The single number used to summarise everything phenolic in a juice, useful for comparing fruit and misleading whenever it is used to predict how a cider will taste.
Where in the process it arises
Sanitation
The cleaning and sanitising discipline that underlies every other process, and why removing soil must come before any attempt to kill organisms.
Kegging
Filling cider into a sealed keg for gas dispense or into a vented cask for gravity and handpump service — two formats whose difference is not the container but whether the cider ever meets air.
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.
Closure selection
Choosing between cork, crown, screwcap, cage and swing-top, a decision that fixes how much oxygen reaches the cider, whether it can hold pressure, and which faults it is exposed to.
Bottling
Transferring finished cider into glass, where the dominant variable is how much oxygen the liquid picks up in the few seconds it takes to fill and close each bottle.
Fermentation vessels
The container a cider ferments in — wood, stainless, plastic, glass or concrete — and how its permeability, thermal mass and resident microflora shape the result.
Faults it is confused with
These present similarly. What separates them is set out on each page.
Cork taint
A damp-cardboard, wet-newspaper mustiness from trichloroanisole, usually carried by a natural cork but capable of reaching cider by other routes.
Mould taint
Musty, earthy, cellar-damp or rotten-fruit character carried in from mouldy fruit or from mouldy equipment, and a marker that the patulin question needs asking.
Mercaptan taint
Onion, garlic, burnt rubber and cooked-cabbage aromas from thiols and disulphides formed when hydrogen sulphide is left in cider long enough to react onwards.
Metallic taint
A metallic, inky or blood-like taste from dissolved iron, copper or zinc picked up from equipment, usually accompanied by accelerated oxidation.
Where this comes up in a guide
The link lands on the step where the fault arises rather than at the top of the pathway, because that is where the decision that causes it is taken.
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.
- Does cider contain sulphites — Most does. Sulphur dioxide is added to protect juice and finished cider, and fermentation itself produces a small amount even when none is added. European labels must declare it above 10 mg per litre.
- How do i sterilise cider bottles — Wash them clean first, then sanitise with a no-rinse sanitiser or a sulphite solution, and fill while still wet with it. Bottles that look clean but have dried deposits inside are the usual source of bottle spoilage.
- What should i ferment cider in — Anything inert, cleanable and closable: glass demijohns, food-grade plastic, stainless steel, or a wooden cask if you can keep it sound. Vessel shape and material change how much oxygen the cider sees and how fast it clears.
- What is cork taint — Cork taint is a musty, damp-cardboard smell caused mainly by trichloroanisole, which can come from the cork or from the cellar. It strips aroma from the drink even below the level at which it can be identified.
- Can i use screw top bottles for cider — For still cider, yes. For anything carbonated, a reused screw-top wine or juice bottle is not designed to hold pressure and should not be used.
- How do i carbonate cider in a keg
Where to go next
- The fault finder — Describe what you can smell and see, and narrow it down from the signs.
- All faults — Grouped by where they come from and how serious they are.
- Cider science — The chemistry and microbiology these faults come out of.
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.
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.
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.
Hochschule Geisenheim University — beverage technology
Hochschule Geisenheim · university · retrieved 2026-08-24
German beverage-technology research covering apple wine and fruit juice processing, including the enzymology of clarification.