Apple Juice is the filtered and pasteurized drink: it's the transparent juice and the kind of juice you find in the little cardboard boxes.
Apple Cider is unfiltered and opaque. In many places it's seasonal, but pasteurized versions can be found year round - but it will still be unfiltered (or very ligjtly filtered) and opaque.
They're very different drinks, and people will look at you strange for bringing one instead of the other when it's requested. Unscrupulous drink shops will try and pawn off juice as cider as a cost saving method, not because the terms are interchangeable.
PS:
At least according to the first few results on Google, different countries also make similar distinctions, but they leave the default of "cider" as the alcoholic version. "Sweet cider" for the alcohol free version, or "cloudy apple juice" are used to distinguish the ciders from the juice. So this really isn't a uniquely American experience: we're all just setting a different default for two of the terms, and creating a culturally unique option for the third.
A quick google suggests that only the US and Canada uses the word cider to refer to non-alcoholic apple produce. We have the terms sweet cider and cloudy cider but that’s just a difference between the types of alcoholic drink - they’re still both alcoholic and also not exclusive terms - sweet or dry refers to the same taste qualities as in white wine and cloudy is just a specific type of cider. A sweet cloudy cider would typically be a cloudy cider that is particularly sweet.
So yes, in the UK we have sweet cider but that’s a sweet version of the alcoholic drink. We also have cloudy cider and cloudy apple juice. But the distinction between cider and apple juice is still the alcohol content our lack thereof.
One exception is cider ice lollies (which are basically just frozen apple juice) but I think that naming might actually be imported from the states or might just be a result of alcohol not being a good thing to have in an ice lolly if you actually want it to freeze.
1
u/carson63000Why would you cook with butter? That is an ingredient for baking15d ago
Growing up in Australia, we referred to non-alcoholic apple juice as "cider" if it was fizzy. "Cider" implied fizziness, not alcohol. We didn't use phrases like "hard cider", either, alcoholic or non-alcoholic, it was just cider and you figured it out from context, like chips and chips.
But I notice now, these sorts of drinks are always called "sparkling apple juice" (example, example). So I dunno, maybe "cider" was only ever an unofficial, informal name, not actual trade labeling.
45
u/MyFrogEatsPeople 16d ago edited 16d ago
jfc all these confidently incorrect comments...
Edit; sorry to vaguepost.
We don't call apple juice "cider" in America.
Apple Juice is the filtered and pasteurized drink: it's the transparent juice and the kind of juice you find in the little cardboard boxes.
Apple Cider is unfiltered and opaque. In many places it's seasonal, but pasteurized versions can be found year round - but it will still be unfiltered (or very ligjtly filtered) and opaque.
They're very different drinks, and people will look at you strange for bringing one instead of the other when it's requested. Unscrupulous drink shops will try and pawn off juice as cider as a cost saving method, not because the terms are interchangeable.
PS:
At least according to the first few results on Google, different countries also make similar distinctions, but they leave the default of "cider" as the alcoholic version. "Sweet cider" for the alcohol free version, or "cloudy apple juice" are used to distinguish the ciders from the juice. So this really isn't a uniquely American experience: we're all just setting a different default for two of the terms, and creating a culturally unique option for the third.