CIDERCRAFT Magazine, CIDERCRAFT Volume 6 2016
It might be tempting to give up and claim that sweetness is relative no matter how you look at it But a very transparent way to communicate sugar content is to clearly state it on a Nutrition Facts label Unfortunately alcoholic beverage companies have protested against these labels for decades U S ciders below 7 percent alcohol by volume are required by law to list their Nutrition Facts but most cidermakes are eligible for a small business exemption Ciders with higher alcohol content are not regulated by the U S Food and Drug Administration and therefore are not required to list these facts Even those ciders that do list their sugar content dont use a consistent serving size making it di icult to compare one cider to another To combat this lack of transparency many cidermakers have created their own sweetness scales and include these scales on their packaging These scales may be as simple as an arrow 68 CIDERCRAFTMAG COM that points to a given sweetness level or to the residual sugar percentage in the cider Some scales may include other quantitative data such as total acidity or pH But at the moment there is no consistent sweetness scale that has been settled on industry wide IS MY CIDER BALANCED When cidermakers in North America talk about a cider being balanced most often what they are referring to is the balance between sweetness and acidity There are many other factors involved aroma tannins alcohol and carbonation to name a few But an important objective is to produce a cider that is neither cloying high sweetness but low acidity nor overly tart high acidity but low sweetness In the wine industry the importance of acidity can be seen in how terms such as dry are legally de ined In the European Union a dry wine may contain up to 4 grams per liter of sugar about 1002 SG But if the sweetness is balanced with suitable acidity a dry wine may contain up to 9 grams per liter of sugar about 1004 SG The International Riesling Foundation IRF goes even further taking both the sugar to acid ratio and the pH of a Riesling into account Since it is possible to make a quality Riesling at any point along the dry to sweet spectrum the IRF encourages producers to use its Riesling Taste Pro ile Scale on their bottle It might be tempting to give up and claim that sweetness is relative no matter how you look at it
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