Cider and perry intelligence
Understand cider and perry.
What cider actually is, which apples make it and why they taste as they do, how it is pressed and fermented, what the words on the label mean, and what has gone wrong when something has. Evidence-led, international, and not trying to sell you a drink.
Four ways in
Depending on why you are here.
I want to understand it
Learn
What cider is, what perry is, why a cider apple is not an eating apple, and how to read a label in five countries that each mean something different by the same word.
I make it, or want to
Making
119 production methods from the orchard to the bottle, each with the chemistry and microbiology behind it and what it does to the finished drink.
Something is wrong
Troubleshooting
52 faults with their signs, their mechanism, their causes, and an honest answer about whether each one can be put right. Most cannot.
I want to know where it comes from
Places
72 regions across 31 countries, each written from inside its own tradition rather than as a variation on the English one.
What is here
Real counts from the data, not round numbers.
| Family | Records | What is in it |
|---|---|---|
| Cider apples | 300 | Cultivars with their classification, blend role and — where an analysis exists — its measured figures in context. |
| Perry pears | 94 | A first-class pillar, not a footnote. Different chemistry, different trees, different problems. |
| Styles | 69 | Cider and perry categories across every significant tradition, each saying what defines it and what varies inside it. |
| Production methods | 119 | From site selection to bottling, with the mechanism behind each. |
| Compounds | 80 | What each one does, not merely that it is present. |
| Organisms | 39 | The yeasts and bacteria that do most of the work, and some of the damage. |
| Sensory descriptors | 138 | Each one saying what causes it. A descriptor that cannot explain itself is not published. |
| Faults | 52 | Diagnosis, mechanism, prevention, and whether it can be fixed. |
| Food subjects | 136 | Pairing as sensory interaction, including the combinations that work badly. |
| Glossary terms | 422 | Every word you will meet, in five languages, each connected to the deeper page. |
| Comparisons | 68 | The differences readers actually ask about, answered before any table. |
| Sources | 115 | Registered, with what each is competent for — and the gaps where a retrieval did not happen. |
The fruit
Cider apples are bred for tannin, sugar and juice rather than for eating, and most of them are close to inedible raw.
The drink
Cider is not one thing. Asturian sidra natural, Norman keeved cidre, West Country farmhouse cider and Frankfurt Apfelwein are four different answers to what cider should be.
Dry cider
Cider fermented out or finished so that little fermentable sugar remains, leaving acid, tannin and alcohol to carry the palate.
Medium cider
Cider carrying enough residual or added sugar to be perceptible without dominating, the commonest sweetness level in British retail.
Sweet cider
Cider in which sugar is the leading sensation, whether retained from an arrested fermentation, added after it, or produced by keeving.
Still cider
Cider with no perceptible dissolved carbon dioxide, presented as a fermented fruit drink whose texture rests on body, acid and tannin alone.
Sparkling cider
Cider carrying enough dissolved carbon dioxide to produce a persistent bubble, by bottle fermentation, tank fermentation or injection.
Bottle-conditioned cider
Cider that completes a fermentation inside its sealed bottle, generating its own carbonation and, in most cases, leaving a yeast deposit behind.
Keeved cider
Cider clarified before fermentation by a pectin gel that strips nutrients from the juice, producing a slow ferment that stops naturally with sugar still in solution.
Wild-fermented cider
Cider fermented by the yeast population already present on the fruit and in the cellar, without an added cultured strain.
Where most people start
When it goes wrong
Most cider faults cannot be reversed. The value in understanding them is in the next batch.
What CiderHQ is not
It is not a brand site, a bottle-ranking site, a producer directory or a shop. It does not tell you which cider to buy, and it publishes no health benefits for alcohol, because current guidance from major health authorities does not support them.
Producers appear where a historical, legal or technical fact requires them, and nowhere else. The point of the site is to explain the drink, not to sell it.
Every material claim carries a source, every measurement carries the place and period it was taken in, and figures from different studies and climates are shown side by side rather than averaged into one authoritative-looking number. The evidence policy explains why that matters particularly for cider fruit.
94 perry pears · 119 processes · 68 comparisons · about CiderHQ