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Off-dry cider
Cider, perry and meadObserved typical
Fermentation arrested or the wine back-sweetened, keeping some of the apple sugar. Much harder than a dry cider because the sugar has to be made stable.
The numbers
Each bar drawn against all 30 styles
Alcohol
4-7%
4% - 7%
Titratable acidity
4-7 g/L
4 - 7
pH
3.3-3.8
3.3 - 3.8
Residual sugar
10-40 g/L
10 - 40
Serve at
8-12 C
Worth opening after
3 months
and it keeps improving to roughly 2 years
Sulphite at pH 3.55
45 mg/L
free SO2, for 0.8 mg/L molecular
What goes wrong
Back-sweetening without stabilising. Sorbate plus sulphite, both, and never sorbate on its own or the wine develops a geranium smell that ruins it.
No legal definition sets these figures. They are typical published analyses of commercial examples, compiled as a planning aid.