2014 Ciders… and a Perry too!

As per usual, May/June sees the release of the 2013 vintage ciders. And so, here is the line up for this year (with some descriptions). The website will be updated shortly!

Hampshire Heritage Cider – Off Dry (6.5%)

Well, it wouldn’t be 146 Cider without the original cider making an appearance. And, rather helpfully, it has remained at 6.5% for this year.

An off-dry cider made from 50/50 cider and dessert varieties of apple sourced locally from Fruitwise Orchards, Heritage is a very easy drinking cider. There is both tannin and acid in equal measure – perhaps a little more acid (once again) as a tiny bit of Bramley was used to beef it up a bit.

Medium Dry and Medium Ciders (6.5%)

This year, these are sweetened versions of Hampshire Heritage rather than mixtures of blends. Having had plenty of practice now with sweetening, expect these to be on the drier side of things – so that the cider itself actually tastes of something other than sucralose!

Eastern Delight – Dry or Medium Dry (7.1%)

Made from 100% dessert apple varieties sourced locally from Fruitwise and Hill Farm, Eastern is still quite sharp at the moment. This will calm down, but luckily a few hundred litres have been blended with the much more mature 2012 vintage to tone it down a touch.

Wild West Cider

Sadly, due to lack of varieties last year, there is no Wild West (or, as a result, Mild West) this year. This has been replaced however and given me the chance to play around with blends. You won’t be disappointed!!

Thornleigh Estate Cider – Dry (6.3%)

And this is Wild West’s replacement: a 50/50 blend of Kingston Black and Michelin. A cider with quite a lot of character, the moderate flavour of Michelin allows the Kingston Black charisma to shine through.

As there is only 1300 litres of it, Thornleigh will only be available as a dry cider in 2014.

Hampshire Perry – Medium Dry (7.3%)

With only 650 litres produced (it is a trial after all) this is 146 Ciders first perry… and it is really rather good (if I say so myself). A floral perry with a touch of acid, this is made from dessert pears sourced from Hill Farms once disused pear orchard simply called ‘Old Pear’… they don’t know what the varieties are, but I am very glad I tried it!

There will be some bottles and it will be available on draught at selected festivals.

So, there you have it – the 2014 line up. I hope you enjoy them and do give feedback!!

Shiny new website for 146 Cider Company...

The new 146 Cider website has been launched. Feel free to have a look... its fresher (and better) than the old one.

www.146cider.co.uk

Once you start to travel down the website thingy it becomes a job in its own right to keep things up to date and fresh. I do have some advice about launching a website though (from hard experience). Don't treat it like you would launching a boat. In my case, it was a bottle of traditional method cider. All I can say is that, firstly, bottles are harder than computer screens and, secondly, cider and computer gubbins don't mix as well as I had anticipated!

I hope you like the new site:-)

Another win at Winchester for Eastern Delight...

I really love this cider thing. There is always a chance to meet new people and there is always an excuse to have fun. The 2014 Winchester Ale and Cider Festival was just - and working on the bar was a great deal of fun.

And because of this, it is even more satisfying that 146 Cider was awarded the Gold Medal, for the second time, for Eastern Delight. And to make things even better, the Medium cider (yeah, its simply called medium) won the Silver Medal... so a 1st and a 2nd for the local cider.

I will update with suitably crowing photos of the awards when I get them, but needless to say my head is quite large at the moment:-) And excellent way to start 2014!!



In other news...

It is also worth letting you know that 146 Cider can now be found in draught at Ebeneezers pub in Hythe... and in bottle form at the Butchers Hook micropub in Bitterne Triangle. I will get them onto the website as soon as I have a second.

I really hope it goes well at these pubs as I would love to have a couple of regular local pubs that I could point people to. I am not especially paranoid, but previously I did get the feeling that I had a 'shadow' when trying to get in to any pub in Southampton... it seemed I would supply and then, oddly, a 'certain' company who appear to rebadge ciders would come in a lot cheaper. Lets hope their local salesperson has matured a little and leaves enough space for more than one cider company - after all, its not as if they make the stuff (possibly) - and selling cider shouldn't be [puns relating to other company cider pun names removed]