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Cider Sensory Starter Kit
Unlock the full potential of your cider-tasting skills with FlavorActiV’s Cider Sensory Starter Kit, the essential tool for training your sensory panel and elevating your cider-making expertise.
Designed for use in professional cider sensory courses and cidery training programs, this kit includes 10 GMP-certified cider flavour standards. These standards help tasters identify and describe key aroma and flavour compounds commonly found in cider, including off-flavours, taints, and positive notes.
Whether you’re a seasoned cider maker or starting, the Cider Sensory Starter Kit allows you to develop consistency, accuracy, and confidence in detecting and scaling cider flavour profiles.
We ship globally – shipping costs may apply depending on your region
Minimum Order: £275
WHY TRAIN WITH THE CIDER SENSORY KIT?
Training with this kit helps you:
- Identify and describe both positive and faulty cider aromas.
- Build a shared sensory vocabulary across your team.
- Calibrate taste perception to industry standards.
- Strengthen quality control and flavour consistency.
- Improve confidence in competition judging or panel discussions.
Whether you’re a seasoned cider maker or new to sensory evaluation, this kit provides everything you need to elevate your tasting skills.
WHAT’S INCLUDED IN THE CIDER SENSORY STARTER KIT?
Each Cider Sensory Starter Kit contains the following 10Â GMP Flavour Standards:
– Sour
– Musty
– Barnyard
– Earthy
– Phenolic
– Acetaldehyde (Acetal)
– SulphiticÂ
– Indole
– Metallic
– Mercaptan
These standards are globally trusted by professionals for sensory training, quality assurance, and flavour calibration.
WHO IS CIDER SENSORY KIT FOR?
The Cider Sensory Starter Kit is ideal for:
- Cider makers and cidery QA teams building a sensory program
- Educators running cider sensory courses
- Competition judges and panellists seeking calibration
- New and experienced tasters aiming to build a shared flavour vocabulary
HOW TO USE THE CIDER SENSORY STARTER KIT?
Step 1: Prepare Your Tasting Environment
Before starting your session, make sure your tasting area is:
- Clean and neutral — free from strong odours (perfume, cleaning products, or food)
- Well-lit and quiet
- Equipped with identical tasting glasses and notepads for consistent evaluation
Step 2: Prepare the Flavour Samples
Each flavour standard in the Cider Sensory Starter Kit comes in a precise dose. To prepare:
- Choose a base cider (or water for practice) that is neutral and unflavoured.
- Dissolve one capsule or ampoule of the flavour standard into the recommended volume (usually 1 litre).
- Mix gently to ensure even distribution.
- Label each sample clearly — for example, “Sample A – Sour” or “Sample B – Phenolic.”
Step 3: Conduct the Sensory Tasting Session
- Serve the samples one by one in coded glasses.
- Taste and discuss each flavour as a group, focusing on aroma, taste, and aftertaste.
- Encourage panellists to describe what they perceive using sensory vocabulary (e.g., fruity, sulphuric, metallic).
- Compare your observations with the official FlavorActiV flavour reference guide to confirm accuracy.
Step 4: Calibrate and Review
- Record each taster’s perception and intensity rating for every flavour.
- Discuss variations and align terminology.
- Use these results to calibrate your panel’s sensitivity and maintain consistency over time.
Repeat this exercise regularly as part of your sensory training or quality assurance program.
WHY CHOOSE FLAVORACTIV?
When it comes to professional sensory training for beverages, FlavorActiV is the global leader trusted by breweries, cideries, and beverage producers worldwide.
Our Cider Sensory Starter Kit and training programs are designed to help you build a skilled sensory team, improve product consistency, and ensure the highest quality standards in every batch of cider you produce.
Get Started Today
Order the Cider Sensory Starter Kit to elevate your cider-tasting skills and develop a world-class sensory panel. Need help designing a complete sensory program? Contact our team for guidance and support.
FlavorActiV GMP Flavour Standards
Only Pharmaceutical Quality GMP Flavour Standards provide sufficient quality for professional sensory panels to train and validate with.
We produce encapsulated GMP (Pharmaceutical Good Manufacturing Practice) Flavour Standards that are safe to both smell and drink. The compounds within our capsules impart the aroma, taste and mouthfeel of a specific defect or positive flavour into a beverage for the purposes of taster training, calibration and quality control.
Our individual flavour GMP Flavour Standards are sold by flavour, each flavour pack contains 5 capsules, each separately blister packaged. Our sensory kits contain a mixture of flavours, each separately blister packaged, read the product description for flavour details.
We ship globally, and have over 20 years of experience at it. Our GMP Pharmaceutical Flavour Standards are produced to the highest standards, and as such, their shelf-life is strong and their quality consistent.
FlavorActiV’s flavour centre is the world’s only pharmaceutically run facility dedicated to the production of flavour reference standards. The Flavour Centre is a state-of-the-art facility housed within the campus of world-renowned Quay Pharma near Liverpool in the U.K.
The Flavour Centre was designed by FlavorActiV from the ground up at the direct request of global customers as they looked to move away from inferior food grade ‘certified flavour standards’ to GMP Pharma, a standard that ensures safe, stable, traceable, consistent and long shelf-life products.
All FlavorActiV’s industry-leading encapsulated flavour standards are manufactured following GMP at our Flavour Centre. All aspects of manufacture are overseen by Quay Pharma who are audited by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.K. Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory agency (MHRA). We also welcome customer audits.
Only FlavorActiV GMP flavour standard capsules bear our mark of authenticity.
We brand each of our capsules so that our customers know they’re getting the Pharmaceutical GMP Quality that only FlavorActiV provide.
Industry leading packaging and shelf-life
FlavorActiV flavour standards are blister packaged, which extends shelf-life and protects capsules from potential contamination. The average shelf-life of FlavorActiV flavour standards is 18 months to 4 years, depending on the flavour compounds.
We will never ship in pots or plastic packaging, here’s why…
Blister packaging protects capsules from the environment until they are ready for use. Blister packaging greatly reduces the amount of headspace for possible flavour escape. As each capsule individually blister packaged, making use of one capsule still leaves all others protected. FlavorActiV Flavour Standard packaging is 100% recyclable, as opposed to polypropylene which is not widely recycled.
Pots are semi-porous, they allow molecules to pass through and flavour to be lost, their significant headspace also adds to substantial flavour escape as a gas, even when using just one capsule all those remaining in the pot are exposed.
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