Cider
Cider is not beer, but the fermented juice of crushed apples. It can be bone dry to sweet, and is supposed to taste fermented rather than like fresh apple juice.
- Alcoholtraditional cider 3–9% according to the BJCP (French cider 3–6%, English 6–9%)
- Entry levelEasy to start with
What is it?
Myth or fact?
Myth
‘Cider is a kind of apple beer.’
Cider is fermented apple juice. No malt is involved, so it is not beer.
Myth
‘Cider is just apple juice with fizz and alcohol.’
A good cider tastes fermented, just as wine does not taste of grape juice. Drier ciders can actually become more complex and less fruity.
Myth
‘Cider is always sweet.’
Cider ranges from bone dry to as sweet as dessert wine. Spanish sidra, for example, is dry and sour.
Where does it come from?
How to pour it
Traditional Spanish sidra is poured with an exaggerated pouring movement ('escanciar'). That releases volatile acids and carbon dioxide, and you drink it with almost no fizz.
Similar to: Mead
Terms
- Yeast
- The micro-organism that during fermentation converts the sugars from the malt into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
- Malt
- Grain, usually barley but for example also wheat, that has been steeped, germinated and dried so that sugars become available for the yeast; the more strongly the malt is roasted, the darker the beer.
- Mouthfeel / body
- How a beer feels in your mouth: how full or thin it is (the body), how much fizz it has and whether it is, for example, creamy or rather astringent.
- Dry (highly attenuated)
- A beer that feels little sweet, because the yeast has converted most of the sugars.
