Wetherspoons international real-ale festival
J D Wetherspoon, the big national pub chain is advertising it’s international real ale festival from 27th March - 14th April with “Imported beers and ciders” but inside the situation is extremely disappointing:
The only real cider is Weston’s Conquest Scrumpy and in my local ’spoon the ‘festival’ Conquest box is simply replacing the space normally occupied by Weston’s Old Rosie. Conquest is a pleasant enough drink, which some may know as ‘Bounds Brand’ but the regular Old Rosie drinkers felt it to be a weak substitute at 4.8% instead of 7.3%, with similarly diluted flavour profile when you can actually taste the water in it.
But the really bad news is the featured imported cider for the festival. Is it Breton, Welsh or Basque? From Normandy, Asturias or Canada?
No it’s the usual colourful fruity alcopops from Scandinavia with a slight variation:
Kopperberg Cherry - made with fresh water from Sweden, fermented apples with the added taste of cherry.
For the International beer and cider festival J D Wetherspoons has teamed up with CAMRA, the former consumer organisation, now working in conjunction with the retail industry to promote fruit flavoured alcopops passed off as cider.
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Over on the ukcider cider community discussion group the same old topics keep coming around again, but each time with a seasonal variation and a new mixture of personalities. I thought I’d do a quick round up of current threads.
Low gravities of early juice
The poor levels of sunshine in the UK summer are blamed for low sugar levels in this year’s apples. The juice is predicted to be low in gravity and flavour, but this may only apply to ‘earlies’ because later fruit continues to ripen in the autumn, and in case it’s the yeast which accounts for a large amount of the flavour in finished matured cider.
Cider Field Research
Dave Reedy joins us from Hawaii. He’s doing a degree in Ethnobotany at University of Hawaii at Manoa, and has managed to specialise in the ethnobotany of cider and cider apples, even though there isn’t a single apple tree on the entire island! He’s also visiting the UK next month so perhaps we’ll have a meetup somewhere.
Still waiting
Ribbing camra for their failure to fulfil a promise to change the anomolous definition of real cider on the website.
French cider online
A new mail order service for bottled Normandy cider.
White labs cider yeast
Re-ordering soon. Dick doesn’t use it any more, but it could be the altitude. Andrew would like to know exactly which strain it is.
Ross on Wye cider festival
Reports from ukcider members who attended and had a thoroughly good time by all accounts.
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ukcider has a working definition of real cider which focusses on the ingredients. The biggest difference between craft ciders and industrial ciders such as strongbow, magners and blackthorn is in the juice content. It stands to reason really, that something made from 100% fresh (not concentrated) fruit juice is goig to have a lot more natural flavour than sugar, glucose, water and malic acid. So we have this:
Real cider is the product of fermenting fresh apple juice.
The amount of apple juice which went into the final product must be between 85 and 100% and should be clearly stated on the container it is sold in or dispensed from.
No artificial sweeteners, flavourings or colourings
are permitted.
( For real perry substitute pear juice ) ukcider 30/11/2003
The point about ingredients labelling is something which is actively campaigned for by ukcider. We believe that cider drinkers of all types deserve to know exactly what goes into the products, and that this can only help the craft or artisan perry and cider makers who work with the unadulterated full juice.
The Real Ale organisation camra, on the other hand, has a definition which allows for the addition of extraneous sugar “to aid fermentation” but then goes on to suggest that “Ideally, however the minimum juice content should not be lower than 90% volume.” which is fine.
There is then a controversial clause in their description of “how to make real cider” which appears to condone the following practice under that heading:
A number of the larger producers will add sugar at the fermentation stage, enabling the cider to reach 12-14%abv, and then it is diluted down before it is sold (the legal limit for cider is 8.5%abv).
We were assured on 9th July that the above is not intended to cause ambiguity and will be altered on the website to avoid any confusion.
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CAMRA announce the winners:
The National Champions 2007 are:
Cider: West Croft Janet’s Jungle Juice, Somerset
Perry: Hartlands, Gloucestershire
The Harris family of Brent Knoll in Somerset have been producing cider since 1994 and source their fruit locally. In 1997 the Harris’ planted an orchard which is maintained free from chemicals and it is the fruit from this orchard which is included in this award winning blend of Janet’s Jungle Juice.
On being told that his Janet’s Jungle Juice Cider had won Gold, John Harris of West Croft Cider said: “I’m very pleased to have the quality and skills which go into our cider recognised nationally. I last won Gold in 1996 and am delighted to win again.”
Hartland’s of Tirley in Gloucestershire is a family run business which has been passed along three generations and previously won the National Gold Champion Perry Award in 2003. Dereck Hartland is renowned and admired by his fellow producers for his sensible timeless approach to producing consistently high quality products from local fruit.
Dereck Hartland was also overjoyed on being told that his perry had won Gold, saying “It is brilliant news to win such a prestigious award, especially when you consider the standards of the other competitors. I’d like to thank my family for their help and support”.
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The idea of trying to get CAMRA to reverse the recently amended bad definition of real cider put me in mind me of this cartoon by Hugh MacLeod
According to my sources, a motion was passed that shows how little hope there is of ever getting a beer focussed group ever to understand that cider is fermented like a wine, not brewed like an ale.
Motion 11 related to the definitions of real and pure cider. This motion was amended by conference and the former definition of pure cider has been deleted from the external policy document. Apparently, this means that cider and perry made from concentrates are 100% OK as far as CAMRA are concerned.
Apparently other motions passed were concerned with promoting the green aspects of local beer production and consumption, and campaigning for an eco-friendly 21st century brewing industry. But what is so eco-friendly about the carbon-footprint of apple concentrates made in China and shipped halfway round the world, that CAMRA appear to have just endorsed?
Motion 11 came from that well-known heartland of cider production and
knowledge, Halifax and Calderdale branch, and called for a new paragraph
to be added to the external policy document, to read:
‘CAMRA defines real cider as cider that has been stored in the
traditional way, and is living in the container from which it is
dispensed. Real cider must not be stored or dispensed using extraneous
gas pressure’.
So Sheppy’s bottled ciders bad; Saxon draught ciders good. ?!?
By contrast, the ukcider definition of real cider emphasises a high juice content, bans additives, and doesn’t insist on the presence of dead yeast residue in a fully fermented and matured cider or perry.
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