Paul Silcock, landlord of the Gardeners Arms in Plantation Road, Oxford, on cider and perry
A couple of months ago I finally restored the bar to its pre-pandemic state. That is, I had four hand pull pumps pouring drinks. Prior to this point it just hadn’t been feasible to have more cask conditioned ales on, as spreading the choice across four beers would split the sales. That reduces the speed with which each cask was sold, and increasing the chance of selling beer that had passed through that sweet window of freshness and was not in prime condition for the drinker.
I’m proud to say I had a bit of a reputation for keeping cask ale in good condition, so it was troubling me why I hadn’t been able to push cask ales to the point where having four ales on the bar was sustainable. And then I realised. The changing field in drinking habits meant I had way more than four real ales on the bar already, it’s just that they weren’t cask. I’ve got two keg ales from Butcombe, another keg ale from Tap Social and a tap that rotates between keg ale, stout and sours. So that was seven ales on the bar.
And yet, through Herculean effort, the fourth pump is back in action as well. Only it’s not pouring ale. It’s serving cider.
An orchard just outside Oxford. Image: Steve Thompson
Personally I really enjoy cider, as I like the slightly excited sugar rush feeling of drunkenness it produces. It does, after all, straddle the divide between alcohol and fizzy pop. Only it doesn’t, that was just the perception it held for many years. Alcopops actually straddle the divide between alcohol and fizzy pop. The clue is in the name after all. But I’m not talking about the fizzy kind of cider, I’m talking about the real thing. The still stuff.
Before anyone protests that I’m talking about cider in a CAMRA outlet, please note that CAMRA does, after all, stand for the promotion of cider and perry along with real ale. It doesn’t include it in the title because the Campaign for Cider, Real Ale and Perry is rather unwieldy, plus the acronym would be CAMCRAP which goes a long way to being self-defeating.
When I was growing up in the 1980s cider had a reputation as a drink consumed by the homeless, scouts and idiots in search of a village. And then it had a sudden renaissance. Such a renaissance in fact that Tesco’s reported it has increased its cider range by 60%, tripling its cider range to keep up with popularity.
CAMRA’s figures show a similar increase, from six pints consumed per head in the UK in 1972 to 13.6 pints in 1992. That’s over double, and those figures stop 32 years ago. But how much of that cider can be defined as real cider? By CAMRA’s guidelines that means a cider that is made from at least 90% fresh apples, not from concentrate. Disappointingly UK law only needs a cider to contain 35% apple juice, either from fresh apples or concentrate, to be called cider. Hence the large discrepancy between your mass produced fizzy keg stuff and the real cider we’re talking about in this article.
One of the first real ciders to be offered at the Gardeners Arms
Yet the boom in cider popularity is probably down to the mass produced stuff managing a pretty swift volte-face in cider perception. Now this is just my opinion, but I think we can thank Bulmer’s and Magner’s for this. They created a two pronged marketing campaign. Firstly they made it seem to be a drink not consumed on a park bench, but by the sort of person who went glamping at Glastonbury, danced exuberantly in fields while managing to remain suspiciously clean, and drove an SUV rather than a tractor.
Secondly, they made it seem like putting ice in cider was a new idea. Incredible! Thank you Bul-ners, as who’d have thought of putting ice in a cold fizzy drink? Why, only the whole soft drink industry. One giant leap forward in cider sales, one small step back in distancing yourselves from pop.
Cider should never have been sidelined as it was. Okay, it does have the deserved reputation for being a little high in alcohol occasionally. But what do you expect? The word itself, Cider, in Middle English, which is where it derivates from, means “strong drink”. That clue is in the title, folks.
But leaving that aside, and we should, ale has never been looked at suspiciously even though Scottish Beither Fire, the world’s strongest ale, is 75% ABV. 75%!
After all, the variety of flavours in cider is incredible. There must be the same range of flavour as ale. And just as many different varieties. And then there’s the incredible way that cider is made. By picking apples, and smooshing them. That’s pretty much it, as all the yeast for fermentation is in the apples’ skins. Now if you want a really drinkable cider you might want to be picky about the apples you, er, pick, but that’s also leads onto another wonderful thing about cider. Orchards.
Friends of mine moved into a converted stable in the grounds of a manor house in Oxfordshire a few years ago, and within the grounds of the house was an orchard. A cider orchard, in case you were wondering where I was going with this. The orchard was planted with a certain number of one variety of cider apple trees, a certain number of other cider apple trees, and so on, so that if the trees were harvested there would be the right balance of apples to make a particular blend of cider.
The closest local producer to Oxford is Hitchcox at a family farm in Chalgrove
How incredible is that? A living, growing recipe. And off to the side, in an old shed, was a cider press. That’s all you need for cider. Apples and a way to press them. Naturally, my friends asked if they could try making cider from the orchard and the aged owner of the manor house was happy to see the apples being used again.
The old cider press itself was long since rusted to a point where all it could produce was tetanus, but there is more than one way to pulp an apple. Soon my mates had buckets of fermenting cider, and after a couple of months, and the occasional explosion from the build-up of natural gases within the fermentation buckets (well, if it was your first attempt at making cider would you have known that it could happen?) the cider was ready to drink. Just like that.
Everything needed to make the cider was just hanging from a tree.
The cider was lovely, and almost blindingly strong. It eventually tested at around 20% ABV (again, if it was your first attempt, would you have known it was going to ferment to the point where it could take the paint off the front door?)
I’m not going to use this article to try and harangue any of you into trying cider. We’re all big folks now and we should all know what we like to drink. Rather, this is just a bit of a celebration of cider. Cider should get more consideration, it would be nice to see more variety on bars across the country. Give people the chance to try a wide range of ciders instead of the standard old carbonated choices. It even mulls really nicely at this time of year, a refreshing alternative to mulled wine. I’ll just leave you with these two points though:
Americans. Stop calling it Hard Cider like it’s going to duff up English Wimpy Cider or something.
Can people stop asking if we stock any fruit ciders? Yes, I know what they mean by that, the Old Mout stuff with raspberries and kumquats in it. But the last time I checked, just now on Wikipedia to make sure, the apple was still a fruit. By being a cider, it’s made of fruit! 90% fruit at the least.
Gardeners World: In celebration of cider
Paul Silcock, landlord of the Gardeners Arms in Plantation Road, Oxford, on cider and perry
A couple of months ago I finally restored the bar to its pre-pandemic state. That is, I had four hand pull pumps pouring drinks. Prior to this point it just hadn’t been feasible to have more cask conditioned ales on, as spreading the choice across four beers would split the sales. That reduces the speed with which each cask was sold, and increasing the chance of selling beer that had passed through that sweet window of freshness and was not in prime condition for the drinker.
I’m proud to say I had a bit of a reputation for keeping cask ale in good condition, so it was troubling me why I hadn’t been able to push cask ales to the point where having four ales on the bar was sustainable. And then I realised. The changing field in drinking habits meant I had way more than four real ales on the bar already, it’s just that they weren’t cask. I’ve got two keg ales from Butcombe, another keg ale from Tap Social and a tap that rotates between keg ale, stout and sours. So that was seven ales on the bar.
And yet, through Herculean effort, the fourth pump is back in action as well. Only it’s not pouring ale. It’s serving cider.
Personally I really enjoy cider, as I like the slightly excited sugar rush feeling of drunkenness it produces. It does, after all, straddle the divide between alcohol and fizzy pop. Only it doesn’t, that was just the perception it held for many years. Alcopops actually straddle the divide between alcohol and fizzy pop. The clue is in the name after all. But I’m not talking about the fizzy kind of cider, I’m talking about the real thing. The still stuff.
Before anyone protests that I’m talking about cider in a CAMRA outlet, please note that CAMRA does, after all, stand for the promotion of cider and perry along with real ale. It doesn’t include it in the title because the Campaign for Cider, Real Ale and Perry is rather unwieldy, plus the acronym would be CAMCRAP which goes a long way to being self-defeating.
When I was growing up in the 1980s cider had a reputation as a drink consumed by the homeless, scouts and idiots in search of a village. And then it had a sudden renaissance. Such a renaissance in fact that Tesco’s reported it has increased its cider range by 60%, tripling its cider range to keep up with popularity.
CAMRA’s figures show a similar increase, from six pints consumed per head in the UK in 1972 to 13.6 pints in 1992. That’s over double, and those figures stop 32 years ago. But how much of that cider can be defined as real cider? By CAMRA’s guidelines that means a cider that is made from at least 90% fresh apples, not from concentrate. Disappointingly UK law only needs a cider to contain 35% apple juice, either from fresh apples or concentrate, to be called cider. Hence the large discrepancy between your mass produced fizzy keg stuff and the real cider we’re talking about in this article.
Yet the boom in cider popularity is probably down to the mass produced stuff managing a pretty swift volte-face in cider perception. Now this is just my opinion, but I think we can thank Bulmer’s and Magner’s for this. They created a two pronged marketing campaign. Firstly they made it seem to be a drink not consumed on a park bench, but by the sort of person who went glamping at Glastonbury, danced exuberantly in fields while managing to remain suspiciously clean, and drove an SUV rather than a tractor.
Secondly, they made it seem like putting ice in cider was a new idea. Incredible! Thank you Bul-ners, as who’d have thought of putting ice in a cold fizzy drink? Why, only the whole soft drink industry. One giant leap forward in cider sales, one small step back in distancing yourselves from pop.
Cider should never have been sidelined as it was. Okay, it does have the deserved reputation for being a little high in alcohol occasionally. But what do you expect? The word itself, Cider, in Middle English, which is where it derivates from, means “strong drink”. That clue is in the title, folks.
But leaving that aside, and we should, ale has never been looked at suspiciously even though Scottish Beither Fire, the world’s strongest ale, is 75% ABV. 75%!
After all, the variety of flavours in cider is incredible. There must be the same range of flavour as ale. And just as many different varieties. And then there’s the incredible way that cider is made. By picking apples, and smooshing them. That’s pretty much it, as all the yeast for fermentation is in the apples’ skins. Now if you want a really drinkable cider you might want to be picky about the apples you, er, pick, but that’s also leads onto another wonderful thing about cider. Orchards.
Friends of mine moved into a converted stable in the grounds of a manor house in Oxfordshire a few years ago, and within the grounds of the house was an orchard. A cider orchard, in case you were wondering where I was going with this. The orchard was planted with a certain number of one variety of cider apple trees, a certain number of other cider apple trees, and so on, so that if the trees were harvested there would be the right balance of apples to make a particular blend of cider.
How incredible is that? A living, growing recipe. And off to the side, in an old shed, was a cider press. That’s all you need for cider. Apples and a way to press them. Naturally, my friends asked if they could try making cider from the orchard and the aged owner of the manor house was happy to see the apples being used again.
The old cider press itself was long since rusted to a point where all it could produce was tetanus, but there is more than one way to pulp an apple. Soon my mates had buckets of fermenting cider, and after a couple of months, and the occasional explosion from the build-up of natural gases within the fermentation buckets (well, if it was your first attempt at making cider would you have known that it could happen?) the cider was ready to drink. Just like that.
Everything needed to make the cider was just hanging from a tree.
The cider was lovely, and almost blindingly strong. It eventually tested at around 20% ABV (again, if it was your first attempt, would you have known it was going to ferment to the point where it could take the paint off the front door?)
I’m not going to use this article to try and harangue any of you into trying cider. We’re all big folks now and we should all know what we like to drink. Rather, this is just a bit of a celebration of cider. Cider should get more consideration, it would be nice to see more variety on bars across the country. Give people the chance to try a wide range of ciders instead of the standard old carbonated choices. It even mulls really nicely at this time of year, a refreshing alternative to mulled wine. I’ll just leave you with these two points though:
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