Now back to making cider and expanding the online cider and perry expertise at www.ukcider.co.uk

A short run of prototype stickers have already been distributed to most of the real cider pubs in South Dorset thanks to Rose who reports a great reception wherever they are offered. The stickers themselves have been designed by Jez, and printed in small batches by Dick Dunn over in the USA and posted over to Rose here in the UK. Now there are just enough to send out a handful each to people who know they can definitely get them put up in doorways and windows of pubs that serve full juice real cider and perry.

The idea to get this up to the next stage is that the artwork is made available on the ukcider wiki so that anybody with a good quality printer can follow the instructions to make some more for local distribution. There are over 1,000 cider pubs recommended in our online cider pub guide but we want to concentrate on those that sell unique, local craft ciders. Much as we really do appreciate all those Wetherspoons pubs that sell Westons Old Rosie and Vintage cider, both excellent drinks, we are aiming at the outlets for smaller producers at first.

Thanks to Martin of HarrodHorticultural for commenting with his article about Apple Day from last year, the original being here

There are a huge number of events this year, because apple day just keeps on growing and the cider wiki current events page for October points to the common ground apple day page where you can see them all listed county by county.

Now there’s also a shorter list of Apple Day events which include cider in some form, and which local event organisers can easily add to just by editing the wiki as normal. It’s not late to think about putting on a small apple day event even now. If you have a common orchard nearby you could just invite the neighbourhood round to admire the fallen fruit, learn a bit about apple varieties and then go for a meal afterwards with some cider or perry. Or make it a childrens party day with apple juice and a drop of real cider for the grown ups.

Myself, I’ll be making my way to Walthamstow Apple Day on October 13th and I do hope you manage to find an event near enough to wherever you live as well and support it on the day. If you do know of any events in October loosely connected with apple day and incorporating cider in some form then please add them to the Apple Day page.

The rationale behind it was explained as follows:

FAQ month is during November 2006. The purpose is to concentrate our combined efforts for a shortish period on “barn raising’ to help build and expand the cider makers FAQ ( Frequently Asked Question page(s)). No obligation on anybody, but even if only a few people take part, it could make a big difference and be enjoyable and productive through teamwork.

During the designated month, we can have different people taking on various roles eg

* Ask new questions on the mailing list
* Reply to them
* Copy the most relevant answers onto the FAQ
* Volunteer specialist areas of expertise by posting little bits of knowhow onto the wiki * Go back through the group archives and recover previous good answers and questions
* Formatting, proofreading, correcting and editing wiki pages.
* Learn more about cider making and about collaborating on a wiki FAQ.
* other roles

The aspiration is that at the end of it we will have a substantially enlarged and more useful cider makers FAQ section available.

In preparation for this year I’ve reorganised the one long FAQ page into a series of pages, so now there are separate pages for
General_cider_making_issues
Fruit Tree Orchards FAQ
Cider Press and fruit pressing FAQ
Fermentation
Alcohol Content
Bottling
Faults and additives_FAQ
Cider making Equipment
Rural_Myths_about_cider_and_cidermaking

each tagged with the category: Cider makers FAQ

also noted some cider pages on jottit.com

The Cider House at Quatt

Originally uploaded by Andyrob

Thanks to User:Tygon4 who uploaded the original large size photo of this special cider house to the ukcider wiki last night. There were some problems with the image page which I haven’t got to the bottom of yet, but it was still possible to view the picture so I’ve uploaded a smaller version and also added it to the Flickr ukcider pool.

The interesting this is that as well as the well know cider producing regions of Normandy and Britanny, there’s also a fair amount of small scale production going on in other areas, far away. The Champagne and Burgundy districts in particular.

To get an idea of where the various French Departements actually are, relatively, I found the following map helpful:

 ”We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to oppose the abolition of the small scale cider producer exemption.”

More details from petition creator

Ever since duty was introduced on cider and Perry in the 70s there has been a small scale cider exemption in place.

This allows small scale producers to escape duty if they produce less than 70 hectolitres in a year.

This exemption was put in place to protect the rural producers for whom small scale cider/Perry production was part of their rural culture.

Currently it acts as an incentive for small scale producers to be given the opportunity to perfect their ‘wares’ without an onerous tax burden.

The EU Commission are setting up a working group to address special excise duty conditions relating to small scale industries this is likely to result in the removal of the exemption

I petition the prime minister to instruct his ministers to resist this to ensure the diverse small cider producers in this country can continue to produce cider.

If the exemption is removed many small cider producers will cease production and a vital part of Great Britain’s heritage will be lost forever.

Main Page on ukcider.co.uk/wiki updated 

How accurate is the count?

Pretty accurate I’d say. There will be some discrepancies around the counties, like whether or not offlicences and shops are listed, or those pubs which have been revisited and found no longer to stock real cider (delisted) but with a few people keeping an eye on recent changes and doing the occasion partial recount, I’d guess the figure is accurate within + or – 25

What’s the growth rate?

The 800 mark was reached on December 24th last year so that’s a net increase of 12.5% in under 6 months. Although there no doubt remain areas of the country with some good cider pubs yet to be documented, it’s obviously a finite number and the growth rate is naturally slowing down. I would nevertheless expect the magic number of 1,000 to be reached sometime during 2008.

What are the trends in cider outlets?

To a large extent the state of the wiki pub guide is a reflection of the activity of the community of contributors without which it would eventually become outdated and irrelevent, so it’s a healthy sign that pubs which have been closed down or changed hands with the new owners having no commitment to real cider are being delisted by disappointed visitors There is also a trend for publicans who have taken steps to obtain cider or put on a cider festival making their own edits to add their premises onto the wiki. A worrying trend is that of some Wetherspoons managers to cease bothering with the Westons bag-in-boxes or Sheppey’s bottles. This leaves the choice in such outlets limited to Westons inferior bottled products, the ubiquitous magners and swedish alcopop flavoured ‘cider’, a far cry from the range originally introduced in the summer of 2006.

On a small scale, cider-by-rosie has shown the potential for local craft cider outlets, selling well where it has been introduced in Dorset. In trems of demand, there’s no practical reason why hundreds of similar operations could not be supplying diverse and enjoyable real juice local cider to thousands of pubs up and down the country.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/food/2007/06/from_core_to_door

Ciderstore.com delivered in two days.

Fantastic news – after talking about great cider that you have to travel to, I’ve found a website that will bring it to you. For this I have to thank the people at ukcider.co.uk/wiki who posted on my last piece and whose list of online suppliers includes Ciderstore.com.

I’ve compiled an iPod version of the wiki Cider Pub Guide. This means you can have the full 880-pub listing in a handy format to take around with you.

The guide is stored as ‘Notes’ pages on the iPod, organised by county (just like on the website) for easy access.

Details and download here:
http://ukcider.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Cider_Pub_Guide_on_iPod

Richard Fairhurst

This is a great service Richard, because when you’re out and about it isn’t always convenient to be forsightful enough to have printed off the right pages for whichever area you might end up visiting. I suppose a final development would be to have it automatically synched onto your portable device, whether it’s an mp3 player, phone or PDA and then be able to report any updates from the remote location back onto the website on the fly, but the iPod is a neat solution because you don’t have to pay any call charges to look it up.