Following a successful evening spent with fellow geeks at the ‘Geek (insert drink name here) Thing‘ at Brunswick Square, I wanted to provide a follow up with tasting notes and further links to encourage you to research Cider in your own time, and who knows it may even become one of your favourite hobbies too!

The actual event started off by eating apples..

I wanted to explain to everyone what exactly made a good cider, so we tasted two types of popular cider apples: Egremont Russet, and Kent Desert Apples, followed by locally pressed Katy apple juice from Ringden Farm, then rubbing my hands together in delight we dived into the dry ciders.

As we had a panel of 20 keen cider drinkers we voted for our favourite ciders in each category.

Voting was as follows:

DRY CIDERS:

• 1st place: Wilkins Dry 6% - Somerset
• 2nd place: Sheppy’s Dry 6% - Somerset
• 3rd place: Dunkerton’s Traditional Dry 7% - Herefordshire

Then after some delicious cheese, we moved nicely onto the Medium Ciders:

MEDIUM CIDERS:

• 1st place: Heck’s Kingston Black - Single Variety Medium straw pressed 7% - Somerset
• 2nd place: Gwynt y Draig “Haymaker’ Draught Cider 6.5% - Glamorgan, Wales
• 3rd place: Perry Brothers, vintage medium 6% - Somerset

By this time people’s faces were starting to get a little red, and I could see they were getting as enthusiastic about this apple stuff as much as I was..

More cheese and pickled onions, and finally to the sweet ciders.

SWEET CIDERS:

• 1st place: Gray’s Farm Cider 6% - Devon
• 2ns place: Autumn Devon Scrumpy 7.5% - Devon
• 3rd place: Tom Oliver’s Vintage 6.7% - Herefordshire

Further Reading / Links

• Flickr Real Cider Group
• UK Cider Wiki
• Camra (Campaign for real ale)
• Somerset Cider

Conclusion

All in all a great night, and before people were kicked out we had some lovely mulled cider thanks to Fiona..

If people wish we can run a future cider night, maybe even one for pear cider, ‘perry’.. what do you think?

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