Leicester Beer Festival - Cider Bar List

The hard working team behind the Leicester CAMRA Beer Festival have once again pulled out all the stops to get the cider bar list out well in advance of the opening day. Bar manager Susan Shirley (above) entrusted this year's cider and perry order to Neville Middleton of Shardlow Brewery, who seems to have come up with an excellent choice. I'm particularly looking forward to trying the single variety Tremlett's and Dabinett ciders, and the Old Monty cider which I've heard very good things about. Burrow Hill is of course one of my favourites, and anything Tom Oliver sends should be of the highest quality. I just hope a few of these are left by the time I get there on Saturday.

Bridge Farm Cider (tba)
Burrow Hill (Med/Dry) 6.5%
Crossmans Tremletts (Med/Dry) 7.0%
Crossmans Home Orchard (Med/Dry) 7.0%
Gwatkins Kingston Black (Dry) 7.5%
Gwatkin Stoke Red (Sweet) 7.5%
Gwatkin Thorn Perry (Dry) 7.5%
Gwatkin Blakeney Red Perry (Med) 7.5%
Gwynt Y Ddriag Black Dragon (Med/Dry) 7.2%
Gwynt Y Ddriag Dabinett (Med) 6.0%
Gwynt Y Ddriag Pyder (Med) 6.0%
Gwynt Y Ddriag Malvern Hills Perry (Med) 5.5%
Gwynt Y Ddriag Two trees Perry (Med/Sweet) 5.0%
Hecks Vilberie 2 years Old (Dry) 7.5%
Hecks Port Wine of Glastonbury (Med) 7.5%
Hecks Blakeney Red Perry (Med/Sweet) 6.5%
Hecks Blakeney Red Perry (Med) 7.5%
Naish Natural (Dry) 7.2%
Newton Court (Sweet) 5.0%
Newton Court Perry (Med/Sweet) 7.5%
Old Monty (Med) 6.5%
Olivers Cider (Med) 6.0%
Olivers Perry (Med) 7.0%
Rich's Legbender (Med/Dry) 6.0%
Rich's Farmhouse (Sweet) 6.0%
Rockingham Forest Sulgrave Orchard Cider (Med) 6.4%
Thatchers Cheddar Valley (Dry) 6.0%
Westcroft Janets Jungle Juice (Med) 6.5%
Westcroft Dry 6.5%

Leicester Beer Festival

Our festival year kicks off in March with the excellent Leicester CAMRA Beer Festival (Wed 11th to Sat 14th). This will be the festival's 9th year at the Charotar Patidar Samaj, and the succesful formula of previous years has been maintained with over 200 real ales, complimented by around 30 ciders and perrys, and the unique Leicester Beer Festival Curry House experience! We'll be supplying a barrel or two of our new Sulgrave Orchard Cider for the event, our first sales of the year, and the first appearance of this cider anywhere.

The Leicester Beer Festival comes quite early in the season for us, in fact a little too early for some of our ciders to be ready. The Rockingham Forest Cider, which is made from a blend of tannic 'bittersweet' cider apples, is rarely at it's best until May at the earliest, but the Sulgrave Orchard Cider we pressed a little earlier in the season is fresh, fruity, and ready to go. This is a medium cider made from organic dessert apples in the Eastern Counties style, and is not too high in alcohol at 6.4% abv.

As for the rest of the ciders and perrys on offer, cider bar manager Susan Shirley has promised a wide range to suit all tastes. There will be more rich West Country ciders than previous years, though the Three Counties and Wales will also be well represented. I hope to get to the Saturday afternoon session, perhaps not the best day for overall choice, but still a good day out and an opportunity for a pint and a chat with old friends.

Waskily Wabbits

We've had a spot of Bunny-Bother this week. The village is currently all 'a-hop' with the fluffy pests, and though not often seen, they're leaving a trail of rabbity destruction in their wake. Where them rabbits have been, there's sure to be an almighty mess of droppings and indiscriminate burrowing. No big deal I hear you say, but things have taken a rather more sinister turn of late...

All our newly planted trees are wire-guarded against the rabbit pest, they certainly need to be since rabbits find the tender bark of young apple trees rather toothsome. The guards have been doing their job well, and whilst we can't keep the nibbling nuisances from getting into the orchard, at least we can be sure that our precious cider apple trees are safe from harm. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for every tree in the orchard.

The big Bramley Apple is safe enough. Razor sharp incisors are no match for the tough bark of this old tree, and any soft new growth is located well above speculative nibbling height. Unfortunately, the James Grieve has not fared so well.

This rather sorry-looking specimen is a text-book example of how not to look after an apple tree. It's very poorly anchored, leans alarmingly, and is liable to rock gently in a stiff breeze. There are signs of rot and bark-loss in several places, and to be honest it's probably living on borrowed time. Despite all this it crops prolifically, producing a bumper harvest of disease-free, sweet, juicy and delicious apples every September. So precocious is it's cropping that it needs to be heavily thinned out to prevent over-cropping. Whenever I'm working in the orchard I cast a fond, paternal eye over the James Grieve, and vow to leave it in for just one more year.

This week a more careful examination has revealed that one of the lower branches has been almost totally stripped of bark, the underlying wood riddled with rabbit-sized tooth marks. It's a grisly sight, made worse by the wet conditions which make the damage look like some kind of voracious bark-eating disease is creeping up the branch. The only decision I need to make now is whether to prune out the damage, remove all the rot, prop the tree up against the wind, and erect a rabbit-proof fence around it... or grub the tree up and replace it with something new and possibly cidery... Tough call!

Birds - There May Be Trouble Ahead...

The garden and orchard are a-flap with all manner of busy bird life. The Blackbirds, Crows, Magpies and Jackdaws have been a constant presence since their return from the fields last Autumn. Robins, Wrens, and Blue Tits are Karen's favourites, I like the noisy Sparrows which have returned from wherever they went to, and are now re-establishing their nests in the barn wall.

Slightly rarer visitors are a pair of Green Woodpeckers, which cling to our old Bramley Apple tree almost invisible against the mossy green of the trunk. Last year we had Green Finches in the garden, pretty little things though common enough. This year it's the slightly rarer sight of a family of Bullfinches, three strikingly coloured males, and a single, much less colourful female.

This photo of Bullfinches has been kindly made available for use by Sergey Yeliseev under a Creative Commons Licence.

The Bullfinch is listed by the RSPB as being at high risk following a recent decline in numbers, so it's with mixed feelings that we welcome this bird into our garden. Actually we didn't welcome it, and I wouldn't have thought the birds themselves could care less whether we had or not. Anyway, they're here now, and whilst they're definitely welcome, I do fear for our young fruit trees this Spring.

Bullfinches are a notorious pest of commercial orchards, they have a fondness for the fruit buds of various trees, orchard fruit trees in particular. A decent sized flock of these beauties can have a serious effect on the fruiting potential of an orchard, I'll be keeping a watchful eye on the emerging buds on our own trees. What was shaping up to be our first decent crop since planting our little orchard of cider apple trees, could yet be 'nipped in the bud' as it were.

Whip & Tongue Action

I've now finished grafting some of the Dabinett scions onto four of the MM106 rootstocks. I decided there was absolutely no need to do this outside in the cold, so the task was completed in the warm comfort of the kitchen. Karen made herself scarce as sharp slivers of wood pinged off the walls, making the floor a dangerous place for bare feet. The technique I used is known as Whip & Tongue (whoever thought that one up must still be chuckling in their grave), whereby matching diagonal cuts are made on the rootstock and scion, with an additional notch to help the graft hold together. It seemed to go quite well, and as a first attempt unsupervised, I'll be more than happy if just one of my efforts comes to fruition.

The equipment I used was an Opinel No.7 Knife, my trusty Felco Secateurs, an anti-bacterial wipe, and several strips of polythene cut from a freezer bag. This last item is used to bind the graft and prevent it drying out whilst healing. For a fuller explanation of the techniques used in grafting I would recommend Stephen Hayes excellent Fruitwise Video Guides.

There's a spare rootstock which I'll be planting out, or 'Stooling' to hopefully create more rootstock for next year's grafting, more of which later...