Cider Blogs and Tags

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Cider Blogs

I do wonder why we are not seeing very many cider blogs at all yet. To me it seems the arguments for any small business or serious hobbyist publishing a blog are compelling. At least somebody at Westons or Thatchers might be blogging by now? What better way to share the ups and downs of cidermaking, orchard management, pictures and illustration and anything else the cidermaker wants to write about.

Here are some good reasons to start a ciidermaking blog:

  • EASY It's almost as easy as writing an email and snding it to ukcider
  • CHEAP/FREE You can get a free blog for yourself at one of many providers such as blogger.com or wordpress,org and not have to worry about hosting charges or increasing bandwidth
  • CONVERSATION Because blogs allow for comments, you can make contacts, friends and learn from pointers that your audience sends in.
  • INSIGHT into the market through engagement with potential customers
  • GOOGLE loves blogs, building your visibility and traffic


And to dispel some myths:

  • Technology

Blogging at it's simplest doesn't require any technical knowhow. It's as easy as posting a webmail or bulletin board. You could even compose your entry first in a Word processor and then paste it in if you like.

  • Keeping it up

You don't have to write something every day as some people believe ( perhaps after having started diaries as teenagers and then shortly abandoned them? ) Once a week or month would still have a big impact compared to a static "homepage" type site which nobody can interact with.



The rest of this page is for rendering RSS feeds from those cider blogs which do exist.

For example

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Torkard Cider

Torkard Cider

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Rockingham Forest Cider

Rockingham Forest Cider

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Fruitwise

Fruitwise Heritage Apples

Fruitwise blog to close

I have had problems editing this blog and often could not post pictures or edit entries after posting. A move to a better plan with Yahoo has made this easier, but one consequence of this new plan has been a better statistic analysis, and a graph shows a significant and sustained drop off in hit rate since I made this blog the index page. The old index page where you clicked to go to the menu seemd to be more effective.


I will therefore shortly go back to a more traditional index page which is easir to get to the menu from. I may put the blog elsewhere in the site or more likely drop it and replace it with an orchard diary page. It's not so much that I am anxious to get vast numners of hits, but there is a lot of apple information posted up here, which I know from converstaions at the markets and the positive comments on the Fruitwise videos on Youtube are well received by many folks.


Sorry for leting things slip a bit, thats what comes of having bitten off more than I can chew!

Apple season almost over

The season is almost over, with just 3 more markets to Christmas, 2 Farehams and a Winchester. The new apple store has been successful in keeping the apples longer, but the mice have proved more resourceful than I hoped in getting in and I sadly found evidence of mouse damage in the boxes of Sunset apples yesterday. These apples are always selectively targeted by pests as they are so sweet and become soft and very fragrant by this time, and they have been in store for 2 months. I threw them all out, keeping just a few of the biggest and best untouched fruit for cooking.




There are just so many problems we face trying to grow apples in England, let alone not living on the land so unable to check things every day. We won't have this problem next year- the apple store was being completed during harvest due to time pressure and was not throroughly mouseproofed. 5 traps baited with peanut butter were left there last night, we'll see what they find






The farm next to us has been bought by a rich property developer, who has divided it up into paddocks and has had men with chainsaws and mechanical diggers at work all summer long. We hope they finish soon, looks like they are turning the land into a hippodrome. We continue to be the only folks round here who actually grow any food for human consumption, its all going to horseyculture. The Winchester planning authorities still won't let us build a farmhouse on our land! never mind.






I will put some more pictures up plus details of a few extra sales in January.




 




Apple of the week-Tremlett's Bitter

Tremlett's Bitter is a bittersweet cider apple, it is quite inedible unless like me you are an apple maniac. You can make cider from the juice of any apple but how good it will depends on variety, and of course ripeness and cider making skills, and luck. real cider wants tannin, which tastes bitter initially but ferments out lovely when balanced. tremlett's is great in a blend but not an apple you should make a single variety cider from IMHO.


The variety comes from Devon and is ripe in September. It is very high in tannin, hence the 'bitter' epithet, and is a good apple to add to a blend of early cull dessert and culinary apples, balancing their sharpness and lack of tannin.


Tremlet's tends to be biennial, i.e. a heavy crop one year and none the next, but thinning the fruit can tip it towards annual cropping as well as improving fruit size. One of the top ten cider apples to grow. For more information on cider apples get Liz Copas' excellent Somerset Pomona book.


Apple Day coming up

My goodness, September's almost done! It has been a whirl, I have been building an apple store I should have build years ago while picking and dealing with other stuff I should have sone months ago...first pressing of cider apples yesterday, we should have some nice cider this year. I pressed around 20 gallons of Kingston Black and Tremlett's Bitter with a dash of cull dessert and Crimson King for acidity-looking forward to it.


Our Apple Day event is October 18th, usual place, see inside the site http://www.fruitwise.net/menu.html click on Apple Day. there are other events, see the common ground site. An excellent event is at Blackmoors whih is on Sunday 12th October, so you can go there as well as come to our event! We highly recommend Blackmoor's Apple Day if you live within an hours drive of their orchard in north Hampshire, click below for details which includes a hog roast and Morris dancing.


http://www.blackmoorestate.co.uk/


Enjoy the autumn


Apple Day coming up

My goodness, September's almost done! It has been a whirl, I have been building an apple store I should have build years ago while picking and dealing with other stuff I should have sone months ago...first pressing of cider apples yesterday, we should have some nice cider this year. I pressed around 20 gallons of Kingston Black and Tremlett's Bitter with a dash of cull dessert and Crimson King for acidity-looking forward to it.






Our Apple Day event is October 18th, usual place, see inside the site http://www.fruitwise.net/menu/html click on Apple Day. there are other events, see the common ground site. An excellent event is at Blackmoors whih is on Sunday 12th October, so you can go there as well as come to our event! We highly recommend Blackmoor's Apple Day if you live within an hours drive of their orchard in north Hampshire, click below for details which includes a hiog roast and Morris dancing.






http://www.blackmoorestate.co.uk/






Enjoy the autumn


Cider and perry video

Just found (via the ukcider Google group) a very nice short film on Myspace about cider and perry, enjoy. http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=40691513


I am currently about 2 thirds of the way through building an apple store, too busy to blog much but hope to start putting up a photo and some text on the 'Apple of the week' as we go through the English apple season.


PS sorry we have had to put our prices up after keeping them static for 3 years, our production and insurance costs (yes, we have to have £3million public liabilty insurance to be allowed to sell apples!) have risen considerably, so we are now selling at £3 a kilo, but that's still not bad compared to globalised commodity supermarket apples.

Fruitwise apple sales 2008

Welcome to the blog and website of the Fruitwise Heritage Apple company (i.e. Stephen and Julia Hayes's hobby apple farm!) To enter the main site, click on http://www.fruitwise.net/menu.html


 


This is the current list of Fruitwise Heritage Apples sales for 2008. All events are Farmer?s Markets unless stated otherwise. For details of Hampshire Farmer?s Markets check out http://www.hampshirefarmersmarkets.co.uk/


 


Details of Fareham markets which are not run by Hampshire CC can be found on http://www.fareham.gov.uk/business_and_economy/town_centre/markets/intro.aspx and for information about Apple Day, view http://www.commonground.org.uk/appleday/index.html


 


 


Please note there are 2 sales at different locations on Saturday 11th September.


 


August


 


Sunday 10th Winchester 9-14.00


Saturday 30th Cosham 10-14.00


Sunday 31st Winchester 9-14.00


 


September


 


Saturday 6th Fareham 9-14.00


Sunday 14th Winchester 9-14.00


Saturday 20th Alton 10-14.00


Saturday 27th Damerham Apple Day, Damerham Village Hall, 12-16.00


Saturday 28th Winchester 9-14.00


 


October


 


Saturday 4th Fareham 9-14.00


Saturday 11th Ringwood Farmer?s Market 10-14.00


Saturday 11th Netley Autumn and Pumpkin Fair, Victoria park, Netley (details to be confirmed, search on key words)


Sunday 12th Winchester 9-14.00


Saturday 18th Fruitwise Apple Day 10.30-15.00, Durley Memorial Hall, Durley.


Saturday 25th Cosham 10-14.00


Sunday 26th Winchester 9-14.00


 


November


 


Saturday 1st Fareham 9-14.00


Sunday 9th Winchester 9-14.00


Saturday 15th Alton 10-14.00


Saturday 29th Cosham 10-14.00


Sunday 30th Winchester 9-14.00


 


December


 


Saturday 6th Fareham 9-14.00


Sunday 14th Winchester 9-14.00


 


Other events will be added if they occur. It looks as if these events will probably sell out our prospective 2008 apples, allowing for a few private sales, but if we find we have a better than expected crop of our longer keeping varieties, there may be a few additional late winter sales (e.g. early 2009). We will keep you informed.




Stephen Hayes


3rd August 2008

The apple season has begun

Hi everyone. Julia went to the first Fruitwise farmer's market of the year yesterday at Fareham, with James Grieve (picked early for cooking, they ripen to eat raw later) and 4 boxes of Miller's Seedling. This apple is one I tracked down (with difficulty, its now extremely rare) after reading a book 'New Forest Orchard' by Hugh Quigley, which is a whimsical and slightly melancholy story about a succesful indistrialist who wanted a change planted a new orchard. Miller's Seedling features heavily in the book and was highly praised, which led to me tracking down a specimen from Keeper's nursery in Kent, which I grafted. That was 20 yearsa ago, Keeper's is still trading under different management but still very good-check their web site for its excellent fruit information. We got a rare pear, Seckle, from them last winter. It's not the most highly flavoured apple, but very sweet, juicy and nice in it's short and very early season.


Now that the global apple trade has turned apples into a year round commodity, we have lost the habit if anticipating and appreciating the first early early apples as they ripen in late summer, and the supermarkets won't stock them due to short shelf life. As the global energy crisis develops and the cost (both carbon and ecomonic) of refrigerated transport and storage rises, we may be forced to grow locally and consume seasonally once again, another reason why the genes of these rare old apples MUST be presenved.


I will shortly put up this year's farmers market dates in full, I may also change the format of the site, since free blogging has come on so much now and it may be more expedient for me to put up a freestanding blog which links here. Anyhow, I hope to see some of our old friends at the Farmer's markets. Apple crop this year looks good, a relief after the watery disaster of 2007. The Orleans Reinettes in particular look stunning, great to see after 95% loss of this variety last year due to them cracking and bursting due to the excess of  rainwater. If this weather carries on -decent mix of sun and rain with no real extremes-it could be our best season yet for quality as well as volume. Sadly no plums this year though due to rotten weather at blossom time.


enter the main site on http://www.fruitwise.net/menu.html

Summer pruning video

http://www.fruitwise.net/menu.html


<object width="425" height="350"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/pReVULvggJE"> </param> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/pReVULvggJE" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="350"> </embed> </object>


 


 hope this link works, its time to do summer pruning if your trees need it, the benefits are more air and light through the tree and better coloured apples. Don't overdo it.

nice new web site

http://www.fruitwise.net/menu.html


I recently found this nice web site, orangepippin.com. The link below takes you to an item about apple research at East Malling. One thing we really need os new apple varieties with natural resistance to pests and diseases. It is unlikely that it will ever be possible to dispense with pesticides altogether, since customers will not accept spotty or maggoty fruit. Such research can only really be done by charities or government, since the industry won't make enough money out of it.


Long live East Malling!


http://www.orangepippin.com/east_malling_research.aspx

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Cider with Penny

Cider with Penny

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The Cider Shed

http://www.thorogoods.com.au/blog

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    Del.icio.us Tag cider

    Delicious/tag/cider

    use real butter " Blog Archive " ready for it
    Man, I love Apfelwein
    Slyboro Cider House at Hicks Orchard - Still Ciders, Sparkling Ciders, Ice Ciders
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    This portal takes you to a whole load of information about small-scale cider making.  Here you can learn how to grow cider apples, how to process them into cider juice, how to ferment it into hard cider, and how to bottle and store the cider.  Later, you can learn how to tweak the process to make it just what you want - dry or sweet, fizzy or flat. There's sections on unfermented apple juice and on cider vinegar too. There's even a bit of history - these fellows are from the17th century!

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    Cassels Cider

    CasselsCider

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    ukcider blog

    ukcider

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    Craft Cider Making by Andrew Lea
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    New Forest Cider Day 18/10/08
    New Forest Cider Day 18 10 08 Originally uploaded by Pete Yarlett Rose Grant, Barry Topp and Roy Bailey at the New Forest Cider pressing weekend on 18/10/08 here tasting some bottled conditioned perry by the looks of it. Pete Yarlett has added a set of pictures to the UK cider Flickr group. Share This
    Cider Vinegar Making
    Cider Vinegar Question A question which came up at an apple day event about cider vinegar. Is there any easy way of measuring the acidity of our own cider vinegar in order to be sure that it can be used for pickling etc.? To which the answer on the forum was: Buy an acid testing titration kit used by [...]
    New Forest Cider Stall
    We went to the New Forest Cider stall at Borough Market on Saturday morning. It’s always good to have a drink of the wonderful dry cider and a chat with Barry if he’s there. We picked up a small container of New Forest dry cider to take home and some organic vegetables from the [...]
    Great Lakes International Cider and Perry Competition
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    Perry with Organic Boxes
    Real Perry with Abel & Cole Organic Boxes Real perry is such a treat but notoriously difficult to find so it’s fantastic that you can get perry delivered with organic boxes. That’s right, Abel and Cole one of the larger delivery schemes for organic boxes can also supply cases of Dunkertons Perry, in quantities [...]
    Ciderland - new book claims cider-makers invented champagne
    James Crowden, has written a new book called Ciderland which documents the history of cider making and claims that the credit for inventing Champagne should really go to Christopher Merret, a West Country scientist who outlined his method of making sparkling wine in a paper to the Royal Society in 1632, six years before Dom [...]
    Home made cider with homemade presses and scratters
    It’s that time of year again when thousands of people in the Northern hemisphere are looking at all those apples ripening on the trees soon to fall and starting to think….hmmmm what a shame if they should go to waste again. So hundreds of people every day go onto the internet and look up [...]
    Cider, Hard and Sweet
    The second edition of Ben Watson’s Cider Hard and Sweet, is now just out on sale. Ben is a noted US ’slow food’ guru. A fully updated and expanded primer for anyone who wants to make cider and for those who just like to drink it. With the rise in consumer demand for local foods [...]

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