In the Netherlands ‘appelsap’ (lit. apple juice) can be filtered or unfiltered. Cider always contains alcohol.
At the cider salon in Bristol Tom Oliver personally met everyone at the door and shook their hands when entering, so hats off to Tom and would be great to get his take on the ratebeer cider categorisation conundrum (rbccc)!
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Got some useful feedback & links from Tom, plus he’s recommended i speak to a couple of other people. Ill post again once ive spoken to them.
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This is off topic really for this thread, but I will bite. For my selfish personal needs I would like Strong Dark Belgian Ales and Strong Pale Belgian Ales separated by style, because I would focus on trying more Strong Dark Belgian Ales. From a taste standpoint I find Strong Belgian Dark Ales/Dubbel and Strong Belgian Pale Ales/Tripel to be how things should be broke up by styles, however I would bet people are not going to want to combine things like this.
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I see more similarity between a Delerium Tremens and a Tripel than many strong darks and a dubbel. Good strong darks are often more like quads than dubbels.
Anyway, agreed on splitting strong belgian ale, (and belgian ales) into dark and pale. That seems a clear no brainer, which would be easy to do, and which is also 1000 times more different from each other than a bitter and and ESB. Or a session IPA and an american pale ale, for example.
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I agree with @weihenweizen and @solidfunk on this. It’s nearly impossible to separate some “strong Belgian pale” beers from (Belgian) Tripels. So don’t yet bet on this idea being rejected instantly Weihenweizen, you might have more support than you think.
Spotted this from Eric West on defining cider styles
And interesting that Untappd have recently split out their cider style further into:
Cider - Dry
Cider - Herbed / Spiced / Hopped
Cider - Ice / Applewine
Cider - Other
Cider - Other Fruit
Cider - Perry
Cider - Sweet
We’ll, Cider - Perry is technically on oxymoron, the sweet/dry split is of course pretty subjective (which way do all the ciders labelled as medium go?), and I don’t know what Cider - other is for. Otherwise I’d personally be happy with a similar split here - it’s giving more info whilst being easy for newbies to understand.
Interesting thread this. I’m a lot more interested in the cider split than the New England IPA split. Cider is so much broader than the fadish New English IPA. As well as being broad there are designations with historic and geographic roots.
I am in favour of @minutemat s view that the split should be along ingredient and production method lines. Splitting on the end results (Sweetness perception level or carbonation level) feels a lot more subjective and prone to confusion and conflict. I would also propose a Sour / Wild / Spontaneously Fermented Cider category.
In terms of rolling it out, I don’t think we need to get it perfect from the offset. We could start with the styles that seem to get the most agreement, for example Fruit Cider and Industrial / Commercial cider. There after we can split the more traditional , authentic styles.
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Doesn’t also make sense, as Applewine is not made in the ice cider methods.
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I actually twittered @gregavola Untappd founder about this. And his answer was that it was chosen by the community in a voting. But they will reconsider for the next style voting.
If you use the word “Applewine”, you’ll get tons of Germans adding 2.5% Apfelwein into that category. Just accept that apple wine is literally a synonym for Cider in most parts of the world.
Synonym yes and no. There is a production difference between english cider and german Apfelwein.
If you gave an Applewine (ie the Frankfurt style) to your average English cider drinker they’ll spit it out.
If there is any interest I can bring Estonian style apple wine to DACH gathering. It’s quite different from cider, and it’s what the name literally says - fruit wine made from apples. Currently we don’t allow fruit wines to rb, so it is not rateable.
from my side: definitely!
but wait, what? Why should fruit wine made from apples not be rateable as Cider?
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It’s a longer discussion and we can have it in person at DACH 
At the moment anything produced in Estonia that says wine on the label is not rateable, simple and clear. We have discussed changing this policy with @Marduk , but no decision has been made. We’ll see how the discussion of the fruit wine style goes, maybe soon all the fruit wines will be rateable, hence there will be nothing to discuss further.
You’d better be talking about Kuldne or equivalent - as even the strong champagnoise ciders from Estonia should be rateable as ciders on RareBeer.
That policy is pure unadulterated bullshit. The only reason the word “wine” is on the label rather than “cider” is because the government insisted that all “ciders over 8%” must be labelled as “wine”. They’re still ciders, even if the government mandates the labels reading “satan’s bile”. You are aware of the US state that mandates that beers should be labelled as “ale” or “lager” depending on their percentage, I trust? Is following the word on the label in those cases where it’s completely and utterly bogus something you support? Because the Estonian cider/wine case is identical in all ways that matter. (OK, the law has changed, but the cider manufacturers weren’t aware that they were now permittet to tell the truth - I know this as I freaking mailed them.)
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We have a ton of North American “apple wines” in Ratebeer. If it’s 100% apples its cider for Ratebeer purposes regardless of what is called.
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