New/Modification of Styles for Mead and Ciders

According to the meaderies I have been to and everything I have read: cyser, pyments, and morat are considered melomel. Do you have some reference that states otherwise?

Correct. Although I’d just name the style IPA then.

I too would be interested in knowing why cider that has had spirits added to it should be rateable.

Just checked back on this thread after a few days. The problem with attempting to split cider into sub-styles is that you have to do it thoroughly or not at all - too few or vague styles and there will always be examples that do not fit. Sidra often sits on the fence between still and sparkling, as do many others.

Still and Sparkling as the main categories just isn’t right. It’s like splitting ale into cask or keg. It bares no relevance to the cider’s actual style.

With cider the only clear distinction between each style lies in the production method, of which there aren’t that many. You may not have heard of ‘keeved’ before, but it’s a style of cider nonetheless, and with experience - just like with beer - you learn to understand and recognise it.

However, like I’ve said most cider in small bottles from independent producers throughout Europe and the US will be English Style - Sparkling. Corked & caged and it’s highly likely to be French style keeved. Some cider makers and regions only make cider this way, such as in Normandy / Brittany and some producers in Estonia.

Sidra absolutely is deserving of its own style category. Apfelwein needs a little clarification. But again, we either sub-divide categories thoroughly or not at all.

I cannot seem to find keeved ciders in the tags. If you think keeved ciders should be its own style, I would start by adding this tag and tagging keeved ciders. Are keeved cider synonyms with the cidre normandie tag?

Yeah, let me take a look.

Splitting out cider and mead makes a lot of sense. Parsing the competing ideas about what constitutes a definable type is a lot trickier. I will review.

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Nope, not by default. Normandie and Bretagne are regional things. It’s all a pain in the ass because the French seem to use it a lot, but not always and I don’t think they mention when it’s used or not. And that’s the issue there.

Belgium Ale and Belgium Strong Ale, another two styles that needs consolidating also

Hence the umbrella term ‘Keeved’ as a style category name because its the easiest way of grouping all the ciders made in this way. English keeved is a bit different to French cider in taste, and so is Estonian, partly due to differing apple varieties, but technically the method is the same, using largely bittersweet apples.

I’ve never used tags before.

Anyone can add or remove a tag against an entry, so will reach more of a consensus than styles

https://www.ratebeer.com/tag/showall/

As usual tho, the button on ratebeer to add a new tag doesn’t work, so I can’t add “keeved” as a new tag!

I definitely believe specialty grain should be killed and all the various beers dropped into whatever category they actually are - rye PA into IPA etc.

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Not sure about this. Belgium strong ale could also be split into golden and dark. I mean Delerium Tremens and all its imitators are very different from the darker ones

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Specialty grain was relevant maybe 15-10 years ago when using rye and buckwheat in beers was very rare, now they are fearly common and should just be put in the good beer style with a Tag for the grain. Same goes for Fruit beers and Spicy/Herb/Vegetables…

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Belgian Dark and Belgian Pale makes so much sense too…but most people here prefer putting everything in the same place for some reason…this is why Tags should be made more important, Dinosaurs could still use old generic styles or you could use tags to search exactly for the real styles with any twists.

Yes, I fully understand what you’re aiming at and I’m okay with French-style/Keeved, what I’m looking at is the implementation - and how to avoid ciders getting added that don’t use the procedure if we are liberal and how not to miss out on a ton of them if we are conservative about it. Damn hard and harder still to keep things in order after that with France. Reckon English-speaking countries would be dead easy.

Not saying it shouldn’t be added, I don’t see why RB shouldn’t be at the forefront, but I’m thinking out loud knowing what can be expected.

Is Medium, Sweet and Dry cider just a UK thing?

I think it’s used elsewhere but it probably varies on usage (eg. one cidery’s medium is anothers sweet) but I’m speculating.

Personalyly I’d rather keep things relatively simple in terms of cider and mead separations. there’s some pretty obvious ones (like with fruit for example) but I think once it gets beyond what the average person can figure out easily it will get messy. (mind you you could make the same argument for beer styles…)

I agree with this. Keep it (relatively) simple, whether it’s cider mead or beer.

We use more variations of apples in the bittersweet to sharp range… whereas other regions will generally use mainly one type - bittersweet in France for example, or Sharps in Spain. Such variation makes the ‘sweet / medium / medium dry / dry’ detail necessary, especially as certain UK producers tend to also favour cider apples which provide more distinct tannin or acidity, which isn’t as common elsewhere.

Rather than get into this detail, it’s more important to classify cider in terms of production. So all the above ‘sweet/medium/medium-dry/dry’ should be English style - Natural or Sparkling.

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Given how there is still some disagreement over categorisation it’s probably a good idea to get a professional viewpoint from outside the site, so I’ve emailed Tom Oliver to see what he thinks. He’s without a doubt one of the most revered cider makers in the UK who has mentored countless new cider producers through regular courses and talks / tastings in the US and Europe. Will post his thoughts.