The colour of commercial cider.....

[ScottM]

Am I doing something wrong with my cider or are the commercial companies adding something to give their products the colour?

Magners has an almost petrol pink tinge to it, other than that it's a dark-ish amber.
Cidre is the same as above only without the pink tinge.
Strongbow is more akin to what I've been producing but still has more of a darker yellow tinge than what I make.

Are these guys making their ciders with ingredients other than apples? Stella Cidre is said to be made with 50% hand picked apples, I just assumed that the other 50% was normally processed apples.

I made a pomegranate TC and the colour of it was VERY similar to Magners. It got me thinking that perhaps these guys make their ciders with a twist, much like what we do with our turbo ciders (4L apple, 0.5-1L A-N-Other).

Obviously food colouring is the obvious choice but I'm guessing this isn't the case here?

 

[Ken L]

Apples come with red skins too. It just depends on the varieties used. When I was a kid, some of the farm produced Staffordshire ciders were distinctly red whereas some of the north Worcestershire ciders were like pale green cats pee.
Cider is quite variable.
BTW: You're not setting your sights very high if the brands that you list are what you're aiming at with your TC.

 

[anthonyUK]

Have you seen Thatchers Cheddar valley?
I don't think there is anything added to change the colour.

 

[doyley]

"Industrial" cider such as Magners and Strongbow probably have a surprisingly small proportion of apples/apple juice in their product. It is legally permitted to add all sorts of **** other than apples and yet still call it cider, I wouldn't even use that stuff for cooking. Sorry, rant over.

 

[Casey76]

There is a French brand who make a specific blush cider, which is a little more expensive than their "normal" ciders (both brut 4% and doux 2% ABV)

The TC I have maturing in 3L bottles looks like apple juice, yet the carbonated cider (from the remainder of each of the 5L batches), is much paler in comparison.

 

[graysalchemy]

My TC is quite amber, I think that sometimes the tannin I add adds colour obviously depending on how much you add :whistle: :whistle:

 

[Gayle]

My ciders have come out different colours each time! Maybe to do with whether or not I remember to add a cup of tea, or if I'v added honey or brown sugar or other stuff.

 

[GREBO75]

BTW: You're not setting your sights very high if the brands that you list are what you're aiming at with your TC.

Agreed. I'd rather concentrate on NOT making a cider that froths up in the mouth instantly and is as sweet as a mouthful of sugar than worry about the colour, lol.

 

[ScottM]

Oh I'm not aiming for those ciders, I don't mind the stella stuff but I couldn't drink more than a pint or 2 in the one sitting as it's too sweet. Magners I can't drink as it's just far too sweet. I do enjoy a pint of strongbow in the nice weather though :)

My favourite cider is Westons. I thoroughly enjoyed the Westons perry too.

Really I was just wondering what the script with the colour was, different varieties of apples would explain it.... but I always thought that yeast stripped the colour out. Hence why the cider starts off looking like apple juice yet ends up really pale. Even with the added tannin the colour still gets mainly stripped from mine. The only one it didn't happen to the same degree with was the pomegranate, but clearly that was down to the starting shade

 

[Jonny69]

There is no way they can brew those commercial ciders to 5% and still be that sweet. The lack of apple juice -like depth of taste and acidity suggests that they are watered down, heavily sweetened and carbonated. I find it very suspicious that they can produce the drinks in that quantity and yet EVERY bottle is identical in every way. Smacks of artificial flavouring and colouring to me.

Even those pertaining to be 'vintage' or 'scrumpy' ciders that are 7-8% and sweet to the taste (e.g. Weston's Old Rosie) aren't physically possible because there simply isn't that much sugar in apples. They have been meddled with.

 

[Crastney]

when we make cider, the apple juice oxidises very quickly - which turns it orange, dark brown. The yeast then strip the colour. I would imagine that the big producers can do a lot of processing quickly enough to avoid the oxidation, and so have the juice the same colour as when it came out of the apples. Some apples are very pink fleshed colour. this might be the cause. I've never bothered about the colour of my cider, and quite often different bottles from the same batch are different colours.

 

[oldbloke]

"Industrial" cider such as Magners and Strongbow probably have a surprisingly small proportion of apples/apple juice in their product. It is legally permitted to add all sorts of **** other than apples and yet still call it cider, I wouldn't even use that stuff for cooking. Sorry, rant over.

Has to be at least 70% AJ to be sold as cider, from what I recall of the regs

 

[RobWalker]

Yeah they cram it with corn syrup basically. Most commercial ciders are just ****, a lot of them are flavoured with apple AFTER fermenting too (not entirely, but somewhat.) I wouldn't aspire towards them to be honest.

70% AJ would explain why stella are selling "Cidre" too. And Magners can sod off with their advertising campaign of "our pear cider only uses pears unlike others which also use apples." Way to market cheap, low-rate perry to the mass markets :thumb:

 

[Crastney]

I'd rather have a Babycham! :rofl:

 

[Swift Pint]

Would the colour come from the skins? On an industrial scale they will be squeezing the apples to the max to get as much juice as possible out, so the hardcore squeezing could lead to more colour coming out of the skins?? maybe... :whistle:

 

[graysalchemy]

Would the colour come from the skins? On an industrial scale they will be squeezing the apples to the max to get as much juice as possible out, so the hardcore squeezing could lead to more colour coming out of the skins?? maybe... :whistle:

Pale commercial cider is a result of the apple juice not being given the chance to oxidise so that is probably the cause of the colouring.

 

[doyley]

Oldbloke:- I think you are being generous to the industrial cider makers. It is my understanding that under British law cider must contain "at least 35% apple or pear juice, which may come from concentrate" thus leaving room for 65% ****. That is why I won't touch the stuff.

 

[Frogfurlong]

I had a quick google and found this:

http://www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/pdfs/guidance.pdf

It appears you can use commercial colours and sweeteners in cider/perry but you have to mention them on the label.
If they are there as a distictly different purpose e.g. a raw beetroot added to give body, oh and incidentally adds a lovely pink blush then they aren't a colour and don't have to be mentioned.

 

[Hawks]

This is interesting: from the Cider Workshop - http://www.cider.org.uk/juicecontent.htm

This sounds like a daft question. Cider is made from apples, surely? Well yes it is, in part. But over the last 40 years or so the UK cider industry, like the UK brewing industry, has increasingly relied on the addition of other fermentable sugar syrups to substitute for apples (or, in brewing, for malt). Originally these might have been cane or beet sugar, but nowadays they are typically glucose syrups prepared from the hydrolysis of maize or wheat starch, or fructose syrups from the hydrolysis of inulin (a fructose polysaccharide found in the roots of chicory and Jerusalem artichoke). These are normal commercial food ingredients and they're widely used across the food industry wherever cheap bulk sugars are required. Both in brewing and cidermaking they give lighter styles of product which are perceived to be more in tune with commercial needs.

These syrups are perfectly wholesome and they do not have to be declared on the beer or cider label, since alcoholic drinks above 1.2% ABV are currently exempt from food ingredient labelling. They allow the cidermaker to add enough sugar to his juice to take it up to an SG of around 1.100. After fermentation this gives a strong base cider of around 12 - 14% ABV, which is then diluted with water to drinking strength for retail sale. This process is known in the industry as "chaptalisation" (which is a complete misnomer, but that's another topic), and as a result of this the final cider may contain only 30% apple juice equivalent and sometimes significantly less. This is all quite legal and permitted by Customs and Excise Notice 162 (though for Excise Duty purposes the definition of 'cider' was changed in July 2010 to take account of juice content see HMRC link and explanatory note and revised Notice 162). Nearly all ciders you'll buy in the supermarket are made this way. They are in effect not ciders any more but "glucose wines".

 

[oldbloke]

Oldbloke:- I think you are being generous to the industrial cider makers. It is my understanding that under British law cider must contain "at least 35% apple or pear juice, which may come from concentrate" thus leaving room for 65% ****. That is why I won't touch the stuff.

Yeh, I was mis-remembering something else in the cider regs.