The last one was the last beer list… Here’s some questions about non-beer things. I guess these ones are more vague than the rest, so more so than before please remember these are polls to gauge opinion, not binding votes on what we’ll do.
How to split cider? We have lots of ciders, there’s currently very few styles for a very wide range of things. We would like more cider styles but knowing around what to split them is tricky. You can vote for multiples in this poll. Should we split out strong ciders from not (feel free to post an ABV you think the split should be around? Should we split ciders by regional style? Should we split out ciders with extra fruit or extra other stuff? Whichever is chosen will then lead to another discussion about how to split.
Split by strength - strong cider & normal cider separated
Split by regional differences - English scrumpy vs French cidre etc. separated
Split by additives - fruited ciders & hopped / other adjunct ciders as separated
No splits
0voters
Add quince cider, plum cider and peach cider. Vote for multiples. Don’t vote yes to some and also to the no to all of them option because that is not helpful.
Yes to quince cider
Yes to plum cider
Yes to peach cider
No to all of these
0voters
New mead styles. Vote for all you want. Again, votes for some styles and the big no categories would be annoying.
Yes to braggot
Yes to melomel (fruited mead)
Yes to metheglin (spiced mead)
No to new mead styles
0voters
Mead splitting. Strong mead vs normal strength mead.
Split by strength.
Don’t split by strength.
0voters
New fermented rice beverages. Makgeoli and huangjiu.
Yes to both
Yes to makgeoli only
Yes to huangjiu only
No
0voters
Fermented tea beverages. Should we add kombucha and jun
Yes
No
0voters
Fruit wine. Should we add? What limits
Yes to anything not grape
Yes but only berries and cherry and other common stuff
No
0voters
If we did add fruit wine, should it just be one category or split by fruit?
Voted no for Makgeoli and then remembered that a local minimart stocks it (a lot of South Koreans in Aldershot presumably). Also voted no for Kombucha and a colleague has just mentioned that health food stores stock it. The tick whore in me is straining to re-vote.
Huangjiu (Chinese) and Makgeolli (Korean) are rice wines style which share a similiar brewing process with Japanese Sake, with difference in grain used and fermentaion starters. The following articles are best explain what they are:
Because I joined RateBEER, not rateanythingwithalcohol. If all these non-beer categories are to be included, I suggest a name change and rebranding of the site.
as far as I was told by people who have been involved in running this site for 15 years, it has always been “rate anything that has fermented and is not covered by the wine community”
Light/Strong Cider may be a regulated designation in Canada, but is it a style? Doesn’t seem to be in ciders I’ve tried, so considering the bigger picture beyond Canada just seems like an arbitrary spilt when the %abv info is already available in the description. In the UK cheap, high strength ‘white ciders’ defined below 7.5% are now designated for tax regulations, so why can’t that be added as a style also?
Well, they weren’t very inclusive then, were they… I actually get why you’d want to include Braggot and sake, being fermented grain beverages, but fruit wines…? ugh… anyway, this has been a discussion for ages, I’ve shared my opinion. It’s not my call.
No to light / strong. They are not style indicators in the same way a DIPA or Imperial Stout (sorry, Stout - Imperial) are. Im at work but will try and write a proper reply later.
Basically, regional production methods are the only sensible way of splitting cider categories as they are what define a cider’s character & traits, they are easily understandable, and they follow well-established reference points for style.
In my view its better not to split at all than to go ahead with meaningless, ambiguous or vague categories
Looking at the tags, there is a tag for “light ciders” setup already, and this has no items, there is not even one cider currently tagged as “light cider”!
I know Light vs Strong isn’t a style but just labelling requirements. But I thought it would be a good way to separate the light 2% sparkling cider of the strong 12% still cider for example just like we do for some regular vs stronger version styles for beer.
It is in Quebec, Canada. I’m not saying it’s a requirement elsewhere in the world, I just thought it was a good thing to separate lighter ciders from stronger ciders just like we separate lighter beers from stronger beers. The Cider database is huge (over 14000 entries) so I was thinking of a way to split ciders in distinct categories.
