Ciderhouse News - Welland Valley Beer Fest #4

There's is, of course, more to a successful beer festival than the beer. There's the cider... and not forgetting the perry. But even then, it wouldn't be much of an event without a little something extra to keep visitors amused throughout the day. The Welland Valley Beer Festival is blessed with an abundance of extras. The Vintage Buses on Saturday are a day-out in themselves, and there will be a wide range of food on offer at the various pubs. There's also the unique (and possibly illegal) Welland Valley Drinking Team, who make their annual re-appearance at the festival despite last year's near-death experience following 3 days of solid competitive drinking. Good luck lads, go easy on the cider!

There will also be whole a host of entertainment throughout the weekend, with the pick of the bunch for me being the mighty Skibbereen at the Red Lion, Middleton on Saturday evening. Traditional Irish music doesn't come much better than this, and we'll be propping up the bar of our village local for as long as we can stay the pace, at the end of what promises to be a long and exhausting weekend.

Ciderhouse News - Welland Valley Beer Fest #3

We're flushed with success here at Rockingham Forest Cider, but it's not the cider we're crowing about, it's the Perry. This morning was spent barrelling and bottling our 70 litres of perry ready for the Welland Valley Beer Festival, and what a perry it is. Lovely and clear, rich, aromatic, and surprisingly sweet!

When I racked the perry off the sediment in January, it was bone dry with a bitter tannic edge. I could taste the promise in it, but was a little surprised at how dry it had become. Several months of maturation later, and the tannin has mellowed nicely, allowing the fragrant, Elderflowery fruitiness to come through, and a gentle sweetness has returned from somewhere. Most peculiar you may think.

Having checked the specific gravity of the perry, and found that it has fermented right out with no residual sugar, there's only one explanation for the apparent sweetness. Sorbitol, a non-fermentable sweetener which occurs naturally in perry pears, and means that traditional perrys are rarely completely dry, and often quite sweet. Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I'll take this sweetness and run with it. It should be a popular choice at the festival.

On a slightly more cautious note, it should be noted that Sorbitol is not only a natural sweetener, but also a very effective purgative! Over-indulgence of pure juice perry can have serious repercussions, particularly if combined with strong spicy food, Rhubarb etc. It can, and will if taken to excess, (ahem!) 'Go Right Through You'. Don't say you haven't been warned!

Our Rockingham Forest Perry will be available exclusively at the Red Lion, Middleton during the festival.

Ciderhouse News - Welland Valley Beer Fest #2

Leicestershire apple enthusiast Melanie Wilson paid us a visit today. Mel is the brains behind the terrific UK Fruit Scion Wood Exchange, an online forum for 'people with fruit tree wood, you'd like to get to know better'. Actually, it's a place for the discussion of fruit tree grafting and propagation, and perhaps more crucially, for the free exchange of scion wood to help achieve this purpose. Mel's interest in our little cidermaking enterprise stems from the fact that she'll soon have more apples than she knows what to do with. All this grafting has a purpose you see, and apple pies alone can't deal with the glut of fruit she's expecting from her orchard in the near future.

Mel's visit was as good an excuse as any to crack open a few vats of Cider, and most excitingly (for me at least!) the chance to sample our first attempt at a traditional Perry. I must admit, I've been avoiding this for quite some time now. More than a little luck, magic and superstition surrounds the making of perry, and I've been working on the premise that the less I even think about 'the vat with no name', the less there is that can go wrong with it. However, there comes a time when denial is simply not an option, and the procrastination has to end. In this particular case, the fact that we're supposed to be selling it in less than a week's time has certainly forced my hand.

So, the verdict. Well, it's all good news in the ciderhouse today. The perry is in fine-fettle, rich, fruity, aromatic, a little tannin remains on the side of the tongue, but all in all, a very nice perry indeed and certainly ready to drink. What a relief! Only seven sleepless nights to go...

The jury is out on the Rockingham Forest Cider, I'll need to sample a bit more before I decide which vat to go for, but the other good-news story from the ciderhouse is the Sulgrave Orchard Slider which we had a sneaky sip of. I'll be bottling this up over the weekend, with full tasting notes, and on-the-spot reaction from the Red Lion staff and regulars. Stay tuned.

Ciderhouse News - Welland Valley Beer Festival #1

Anticipation of this year's Welland Valley Beer Festival is reaching fever-pitch, or at least it is in this house! It's now only eight days until the event kicks off, and months of planning by the licensees, brewers, and the volunteers supplying the magnificent range of vintage buses, are finally coming to fruition.

I've spent most of the morning in the ciderhouse racking off this year's Welland Valley Special Cider ready for the festival. This cider is 'special' because the apples used to make it were sourced exclusively from within the Welland Valley itself. Old, unsprayed orchards in Cottingham, Rockingham, and our own village of Middleton provided the fruit. By using full-flavoured dessert apples, and limiting the quantity of sharp culinary fruit to a minimum, we've ended up with a rich, fruity cider, naturally medium/dry, and beautifully clear with a pale yellow colour. There's also a hint of the buttery roundness which develops from the Malo-lactic process, definitely desirable in an 'Eastern Counties' style cider like this.

I'm very pleased with the WVS Cider, and hope it hits the spot with visitors to this year's festival. You can try this cider at the Talbot, Gretton; and our 'cider-tap' the Red Lion, Middleton during the festival.

As if the first taste of our 'Festival Special' was not exciting enough, I've still got the thrill of tasting our first ever Perry, and also the bottling of this year's Rockingham Forest Slider to come, more of which later...

Sunny Cider Life at Delapre Abbey

This year's Northampton CAMRA Beer Festival at Delapre Abbey was another huge success. Perfect weather conditions for outdoor drinking, and a thirsty local crowd combined to drink the festival dry of nearly 240 beers, and the best part of 100 barrels of cider and perry. In the case of the cider bar, a hasty re-order was required following strong trade on Friday evening, and even this was barely enough to last until closing time on Saturday.

The Delapre Abbey event is rapidly becoming known as one of the best CAMRA beer festivals in the East Midlands, and is set to grow even further in the coming years, staff and venue permitting. Congratulations to festival organiser Phil Greenway, and all the hard working volunteers who helped make this year's festival such an enjoyable, and successful event.

I propped up the cider bar during the Friday afternoon session, where a small but steady flow of customers kept the staff busy (the lull before the storm as it turned out!). There were a wide range of ciders and perrys from Gwynt-Y-Ddraig, Millwhite's, and Thatchers, including some single varietals and spirit cask matured ciders; plus LocApple ciders from Eve's of Kettering, and our own Rockingham Forest and Sulgrave Orchard ciders. As usual I didn't manage to try any of the beers, though I'm led to believe there were quite a few good ones! Mention must also be made of the excellent Malt Shovel Tavern, which provided a useful staging post for many people on the way to the festival.

The FAQ picture is c/o Ben Coulson, who has kindly made this image available under a Creative Commons Licence.