Most of the time, the cider or perry in your glass will be a delightful, flavoursome joy of a drink. But what happens when it goes wrong? And why does it go wrong in the first place? In this article, I’ll be taking you through some of the common, and less common faults, found in cider and perry. We’ll explore some of the biochemistry behind what’s happening and talk about how they can be prevented. But this isn’t a guide for cider makers (at least, not alone). This is about empowering you as a consumer to know what’s going on in your glass, and why sometimes it’s just not as good as it should be.
One of my strongest memories of cider is of one I tried after closing time at a festival I was working at. A friend had been sent by the cider bar manager to pick a box of cider and bring it to the hospitality truck we were sitting in to warm us up on what had been a very busy, but freezing, night. The errand-runner had no idea what they were looking for and so picked a box at random.
It was the most disgusting thing I’d ever tasted in my life. Rotten eggs, dead rats, and hairy goats. In hindsight, I’m now certain it had every fault in the book. If that had been my first experience of full juice cider, I’ve no doubt it would have put me off for life.
A fault is a flavour (or visual appearance) in a finished cider that is not considered desirable. The vast majority of faults in cider are due to microbial action of one kind or another, but what we can taste or smell is a volatile chemical compound. Mostly, they are not harmful to humans – just simply unpleasant. [1]
On the face of it, cidermaking is a much simpler process than brewing. A brewer determines the eventual flavour of the drink by manipulating ingredients, temperatures, timings and choosing yeast strains. A cidermaker’s job is subtler: to provide an environment that encourages the yeast (whether a selected yeast chosen and pitched by the producer or wild yeasts from the juice, press, and cider house) to ferment in the manner the cidermaker chooses; and to suppress any microbes and control any environmental factors that might cause problems. (There are of course many other choices to do with fruit variety, quality, fermenting vessel, and so on, all of which will also impact on the eventual flavours in your glass and which Gabe Cook explores here.)
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