Ciderhouse News - Cidermaking 2014

Here's a short round-up of what's been happening at Rockingham Forest Cider recently. As you'll notice from the pic above, we have a new certificate for the ciderhouse wall, having gone one better than our previous Silver effort in 2011 and won Gold for a Green Horse/Red Longdon Perry in the East Midlands Cider & Perry Competition. Competition organiser Denise Wright can be seen taking the full weight of the certificate, whilst I stand idly by in front of the impressive East Midlands wall of cider at Nottingham CAMRA Beer & Cider Festival. A great day out, c/o of all the hard working volunteers, but particularly Ray Blockley of Torkard Cider who put together this years impressive collection of nearly 300 ciders and perries from throughout England and Wales. In the spirit of friendly competition I'm encouraging Susan to go one better and present 301 ciders and perries at the Leicester Beer Festival next year.

The innaugral Cottingham Village Apple Day was held at the end of September, organised by Green Horizons a Cottingham based project for families with children who are on the autistic spectrum. In addition to having Red Kite Cider on the pop-up bar we gave samples of a Vilberie Cider to a steady stream of thirsty cider fans on what turned out to be a proper Summer's day. A really great event, and very well supported by villagers and visitors.

Perry making is in full swing, which in the case of the 2014 season is quite a small childs swing with a sensible safety bar. No Green Horse or Malvern Hills this year, but some Blakeney Red, and a similar quantity of mixed pears which will hopefully make something tasty for next year. Needless to say this means there will be no repeat of our award-winning perry, and no Green Horse, which is particularly sad as this is my favourite perry of all. Sniffle!

The Blakeney Red has come out at a modest 1.049 this year, the mixed batch a more respectable 1.055. Fermentation is progressing at a nice even pace, and every day we pray for sub-zero temperatures in a bid to slow things right down and therefore retain some residual sweetness in the perries.

The very latest news from the ciderhouse is that the Yarlington Mill apples are in the process of being picked, and Dabinett (below) are still hanging on the tree. This year, in a break from tradition we will be collecting a tonne of Dabinett from a top cider and perry maker near Leominster.

Green Horse Perry - Orchard to Glass

Leicester CAMRA Beer Festival, 12th - 15th March. Other perries, ciders and beers also available.

Harvest Home

2014 looks to be 'set fair' for us here at Rockingham Forest Cider. Bumper crops and full-to-brim tubs were the theme of this seasons cider and perry making. So now seems as good a time as ever to take stock of what we've achieved so far, a kind of show-and-tell in the virtual ciderhouse. So come with me through the pear-shaped window, for a tale of bumper crops, broken branches, and more Wasps than you can flail an arm at, in the first part of this years Ciderhouse News Round-up. Mostly via the medium of pretty pictures:

The 2013 Picking and Panking team take a well-earned rest on a pile of bagged-up Yarlington Mill cider apples. From left: Me, Him, Her, Ooh-arr!

This is one of the mighty Green Horse perry pear trees. A very good crop this year, so much so that it took a couple of days to harvest just this one tree. Sadly the weight of fruit and some high winds had already brought down a large branch, seen to the left in this pic.

Karen & Susan draw breath and adopt the classic 21st Century Orchard Posture, all Posh Wellies and Android Phones. This pile of Green Horse pears required 'Tumping' in the orchard, mainly because Ninny-Boy Mark didn't bring enough bags on this trip. Oops! By the time the whole Green Horse harvest were finally hauled home to press, they were ripe to the point of pressing themselves under their own weight in the van, resulting in a trail of pear juice and Wasps all the way from Evesham to the Welland Valley. The damn Wasps still haven't left...

This is the Kingston Black crop, with Green Horse tree in the background. I don't know why I've included this, we simply didn't have time to pick these tiny but tasty cider apples.

A reflective moment on the final visit to the orchard in November. Those of you skilled in the techniques of road accident forensics may already have spotted this particular near-miss in the muddy tracks. It was at this point, heavily laden with over a ton of Yarlington Mill, halfway up the sodden hill in the pouring rain, that the Van got well and truly stuck. But thanks to the man-skills of John the orchard owner (and a LWB Landrover) we managed to save to day and get the van, crop, and a gently sobbing me out of the orchard and home. Thanks John, every home should have one.

More Android Phone action. If a jobs worth doing, it's worth photographing and uploading to Twitter immediately.

I've called this image, 'Man With Buckets Of Apples'.

What it's all about. Yarlington Mill cider apples, destined for a pint of Red Kite Cider.

Back on the Green Horse

Green Horse - One of the few!

One of the good things about harvesting fruit from a truly mixed orchard, is that for every tree having an 'off' year and bearing little or no fruit, there's likely to be something else fully turned 'on' as it were. It's not good for consistency, but it means there's always something to press.

There are two Green Horse perry pear trees in Johns 'Far Orchard', one of which has cropped very heavily for us for the last couple of years. The other tree is tucked away in the corner, close to a row of conifers which compete for water and nutrients, consequently it's never had much of a crop on it. This year, Green Horse is having an 'off' year, which means instead of the usual half a ton or more of fruit, we've got barely four sacks of pears to play with. To fill our press we need something like seven sacks of fruit, so there will be no single variety Green Horse Perry for the 2012 season. A great shame as its one of my favourite perrys, even more so because its specific gravity came out at a whopping 1.064, up from 1.050 last year. I guess this is down to a combination of factors, including the dry Summer, optimum ripeness (these pears really needed pressing today), and the paucity of the crop.

To fill the press, and go most of the way towards filling a large fermenter, we pressed the sharp Green Horse pears with a few sacks of another more tannin rich perry pear (another whopping gravity of 1.068). This will be topped up tomorrow with a vigorously fermenting 25 litres of Blakeney Red from last weekends pressing session, making a three pear blend which will hopefully taste great, and won't be as lumpy as our last blending experiment.

The weekend harvest included our first few sacks of apples from one of two Blenheim Orange trees we'll be using to produce a nice sharp blending cider. This will be used for much needed acidity, and as a fermenting starter for the Yarlington Mill and Vilberie apples later in the season. There's perhaps one more perry pear pressing session ahead (Red Longdon is having an 'on' year), then it's full steam ahead with the cidermaking.

Blakeney Red - Yields Down, Gravity Up

Our Perry merry-making continues. This time it's the Blakeney Red pears that need our attention. The orchard has (or had) three Blakeney Red trees, good annual croppers, and more compact than the huge old Malvern Hills trees making them so much easier to harvest.

Sadly, as with many of the trees in this elderly orchard, the Blakeneys are not in the best of health. In fact one of the three trees appears to have given up the ghost this year. We've noticed die-back on the odd branch before, not necessarily a fatal situation, but the whole tree now appears to be either dead, or having a very serious rest! I think that an already struggling tree may have been pushed over the edge by the extremely dry Summer we've had this year. John will be leaving the tree in for the time being, just in case it shows a spectacular recovery next year...

So, only two trees harvested, which is a great shame as the Blakeney Red Perry was probably our most popular drink this year. Even so, we've come home with a similar quantity of pears to the Malvern Hills, and managed to press almost 50 gallons of juice from them, which is a little less than last year. I think the pears were close to a peak of ripeness. Larger than usual, mainly yellow and still quite firm, but perhaps not as juicy as the Malvern Hills. The sugar levels are similarly high, with a very respectable specific gravity of 1.060, the highest we've recorded for Blakeney Red by a long way. It's that dry Summer again I think.

A quick scan of the orchard revealed that the Green Horse perry pears are almost ready for harvest, once again around 1-2 weeks earlier than last year, so we'll be hard at it again this weekend.

Perry Pear Day at Hartpury Orchard Centre

It's been a hell of a weekend of perry making action already, and we've still got pressing to do. Meanwhile, here's a few images from this years Perry Pear Day at the Orchard Centre in Hartpury, Gloucestershire. Exhibitors included the Gloucestershire Orchard Group, Charles Martell, Albert Rixen and friends, Out of the Orchard Cider & Perry, plus many other food and orchard related stalls.


What it's all about. A world record 90 varieties of Perry Pear on display, presided over by perry pear expert Jim Chapman. Jim couldn't make the event last year, so I was delighted to meet him this time around, and deliver my small collection of unknown perry pear varieties for identification.



Workhorse of the world, a Lister Junior powers the Scratter for the vintage pressing demonstration



Levelling out the Perry Pear pomace on the vintage Workman Press.

  

Charles Martell, accompanied by Britains youngest distiller George Lewis, presented their new 'Owler Pear Spirit in the afternoon sunshine. I can confirm that it's very nice indeed, and despite being a little pricey for a young spirit, I've now secured a bottle for future enjoyment.



Gloucester Cattle crop the grass in the recently planted Perry Pear orchard.



The Goodnature Squeezebox Press in action



Perry Pears. All types, prior to washing and sorting.



Building the Cheese on the vintage Workman & Sons press. The pressing demo proceeded at a leisurely pace, interrupted by lunch breaks, downpours and the odd sample of last years vintage. Just as it should be.

 

Washing and sorting perry pears the 'hand-raulic' way, much as we do at home.



Thoroughly Modern Milling

I've got a love-hate relationship with Malvern Hills perry. Obviously I love the taste or I wouldn't bother making it, but from a commercial perspective the high tannin is a bit of a problem.

Here are some other loves: Usually nice weather for harvest. Loads of fruit available. Consistently high sugar levels can give very high alcohol in the finished perry. A naturally clear perry. Nice name.

...and for balance, some hates: Very tall trees make harvest difficult. Harvest/Pressing time ultra critical. Consistently high sugar levels can make for a perry which is hard to sell.

Freshly Milled

But back to those high tannin levels. Malvern Hills perry is a clean, fruity, and quite subtle tasting drink, but the tannins are really quite fulsome and astringent. That's to say they dry the mouth in an uncompromising way. I'm fine with tannins generally, but even I find them a bit 'wearing' at this level. It means that our Malvern Hills Perry is perhaps more of a connoisseurs drink, when we'd much rather it had more general appeal, though the last thing we want to do is dumb it down.

After Maceration

After our recent disastrous blending experiment, I've decided I need to tackle the issue at source. My new-fangled innovation for this years Malvern Hills perry is the old-fangled processs of Maceration. Maceration is simply the process of milling the pears to a fine pulp, and leaving well alone for a few hours before pressing. In this way, the tannins in the pears oxidise, and hopefully precipitate out, leaving all the lovely perry taste but with less of the mouth-drying tannin. It's a bit of extra work because it spreads the processing out over two days instead of one, but hopefully the results will be worth the effort. I went for a 24 hour maceration, milling the pears on Saturday, ready for pressing on Sunday.



I can't say that the pressing was a pleasant experience, but then the first of the season never is. Nothing is in the right place, every piece of kit needs a thorough clean, and fatigue takes hold as we're using muscles that have lain idle since the last cidermaking season. Putting the fun-factor aside though, it was a successful weekends pressing, giving us around 220 litres of juice with an average Specific Gravity of 1.070. One batch achieved 1.071, the highest gravity we've recorded, with the potential to give a final alcohol level of around 9%.

The warm weather we're having at moment should mean fermentation will romp away, and it now remains to be seen how successful our maceration has been, and whether it's worth repeating again next year.



Harvest-Ho

It's been unexpectedly busy this weekend at Rockingham Forest Cider. The business of picking and pressing for the 2011 vintage is well and truly upon us, and once again, it's come a little earlier than we'd have liked.

There's no excuses really. It's been widely reported that the cider apple harvest is up to a month earlier than ususal. But in our case, it's not cider apples that have kept us busy all weekend, it's perry pears, Malvern Hills perry pears to be precise. Somehow we'd assumed that venerable old trees like these are rather more set in their ways than feckless faddy young cider apple trees. We were wrong!



We've come to expect the Malvern Hills pears (more correctly known as Moorcroft, or indeed Stinking Bishop) to ripen around the third weekend of September, which is a very convenient weekend to be in the Three Counties area as it coincides with the Hartpury Perry Pear Day in Gloucestershire. I'd pencilled in the weekend just gone for final preperations in the ciderhouse, in readiness for the Malvern Hills harvest next weekend. It therefore came as a bit of a shock when John contacted me to say the pears were already falling, and since we know that Malvern Hills pears rot within days of ripening, we were going to have to drop everything and high-tail it to the orchard or miss the lot. Worse still, the pears would need pressing immediately  we got home! Bye-bye relaxing weekend, hello hard orchard graft!



It was an eventful and exhausting day in the orchard. We managed to harvest around twice as many pears as last year, this despite several major Panking Pole failures and a couple of broken branches along the way. John had already warned us that quite a few branches had come down in the orchard recently, probably down to the very dry conditions making the wood less flexible in the wind. These Malvern Hills trees are very old indeed, and it grieves me to damage them in any way, but this variety of pear simply must be shaken from the tree, so no matter how careful we are with the Panking Pole, some damage seems inevitable.

So that was the Friday of what has now become known as Malvern Hills Weekend. More on the new, and innovative (for us) Saturday processing later...

A Tale of Two Perries

It's getting close to End of Season Report time. We've still got cider and perry available for sale and there's stock put aside for a few important events going into October, but the ciderhouse is little more than a storage area for empty fermenters now. It is of course, little more than two weeks until we start pressing again, assuming the Malvern Hills perry pears haven't dropped much earlier than we expect.

On the subject of Perry, it's been a generally good year for us here at Rockingham Forest Cider, although not without a few difficulties. Getting them all to ferment in the sub-zero temperatures of Winter 2010 was perhaps our biggest problem, although on the up-side, this did lead to most of our perries finishing naturally sweet and relatively low in alcohol, which is no bad thing from a commercial perspective.

The Malvern Hills pears continue to produce a high alcohol, high tannin perry. As perries go it's quite a refined flavour, but the tannin is astringent and mouth drying, and not likely to be to everyones taste. With this in mind I've been experimenting with a new blend, not entirely successfully it has to be said.

It's often stated (without too much in the way of qualification) that some perries simply don't blend well. I've never fully understood the reasoning behind this to be honest. Is it a flavour clash, or maybe just a bit of reverse logic since a fair few perry pears can make a good single variety perry. I think I may now know at least part of the answer...

The thinking behind my experimental blend was to take a low acid, high tannin perry (Malvern Hills), and blend 50/50 with a low tannin, high acid perry (Green Horse), thereby achieving a balance of sorts, toning down the tannin, and perhaps even giving a more complex and interesting flavour. Simple. What could possibly go wrong? Well the blending went well enough, and the flavour was indeed better than the sum of its parts. The tannin is still there, but more restrained, and the acidity of the Green Horse makes for a more drinkable perry. Everything was looking good so I barreled up a couple ready for delivery to a local festival. The problem with this blend became apparent a few days later on the eve of delivery. Apparently, and unbeknownst to me, if you mix a crystal clear Malvern Hills perry with an opaque Green Horse perry, what you get is a typically odd bit of perry chemistry, and an unacceptably cloudy perry. The fact that this doesn't become apparent immediately is no help at all. Oh dear!

Polymeric Perry Tannins

Unfortunately, by the time the blend was ready for sale at the festival, it had gone from quite cloudy to quite clumpy, which is not an attractive look in any drink I think you'll agree. I've reason to believe this is down to Polymeric Perry Tannins, a common occurence in perries, and not usually a problem so long as they sink to the bottom, or float to the top as shown in this image of a Blakeney Red ferment. The only thing we could do was apologise to the organisers, remove the offending barrels from the invoice, and chalk the whole sorry tale down to experience.

This simple blending experiment may not be a complete loss though. Another 70 litres of the blend is now sitting in the ciderhouse clearing nicely. Unsightly clumps of rubbery tannin like this are bad news if they're floating around in the perry, but thankfully they have a tendency to sink to the bottom of the fermenter out of harms way. Given a little more time, this blend looks like it will come good after all. The moral of this tale is, be careful when blending perries with very different characteristics, and always blend well ahead of the time you'll need it, rather than the week before!!!

On a much brighter note, I finally got round to racking off this years 'Mystery Perry', the one we make from a late pressing of unidentified perry pears. I have to say, this fermenter has been shamefully neglected. The quantity of gelatinous sediment left behind (see pic) suggests that it may not have been racked before. Even worse, there was a good 4 inches of head space above the perry, which by luck was filled with a blanket of CO2 due to a continuing slow fermentation. I wasn't holding out much hope for this one, but to my surprise and delight, it's probably the best perry we've ever made. Vive Neglect!

Mystery Perry 2010

It's always a difficult task trying to describe the taste of traditional perry. Yes, there's citrus, grapefruit, melon, maybe pear, but perry has a unique flavour all of its own which can only really be described as... well, perry! This years Mystery Perry is 'all perry', and I'm very tempted to say 'all mine'. But no, this stunner had always been earmarked for the East Midlands section of the Cider & Perry Bar at Nottingham Beer Festival. All except for a few precious litres destined for Champagne bottles, which will be staying at home with us here at Rockingham Forest Cider (& Perry).