Citizen Cider and the Rescue by Ciderman

Having been trying to get rid of our accumulated junk for sometime I decided that it was time that our garage had some attention. The only thing we don’t keep in it is the car. There is so much junk and my visits so infrequent that it never fails to provide a surprise or two. This time it was a load of home made alcohol at the back which I had forgotten about. Although there are several full wine bottles their labels have all fallen off so it was only the cider which was clearly recognisable because it is in crown top beer bottles. I also remembered that the bottles with a white sticker were the sweet whilst those with no sticker were dry, or more correctly, sharp.

This meant that they had to be brought down to the house for sampling. The sweet was quite good and some ended up going to Glastonbury with Mary. It has lots of flavour and a good aroma but as usual too much alcohol. I always drink it by the wine glass. Being a complete slap dash merchant when in comes to cider making I just follow the old John Seymour recipe from his self-sufficiency bible and throw a good lot of sugar into the juice and let nature take its course. Having had many disasters down the years I don’t make too much so as to avoid a lot of wasted effort. I have not only made quite a lot of undrinkable cider but also I am constantly reminded at this time of year not to repeat the great pea pod wine fiasco again. We had such a good crop of peas that it seemed a shame to waste all the pods so five gallons of pea pod wine were set in motion, bottled and stored. The brew had quite a kick but had the one big snag: getting it past your nose! That done, it had quite a kick but not enough to obliterate the smell, so eventually many years later it went down the drain on the occasion of one of our many moves chasing the work.

When we lived on the edge of Worcester I imported large quantities of cider apples to the back yard and spent many hours pulping and pressing them to make a nearly forty gallons of cider. This was all stored in our brilliant cellar which had a near constant temperature throughout the year. My Hereford cider, brewed in Worcester, was soon being sampled by neighbours and I eventually learnt that I was known by some neighbours as Ciderman.

One set of neighbours fell victim to the persuasive powers of Ciderwoman in that she had encouraged them to consider the merits of camping as a cheap holiday for a large family. Soon, thanks to the local ad mag, they had acquired a full range of equipment, including an old style frame tent with steel work which seemed to be a scaled down version of a New York construction site back in the thirties. Such was its size that the family had tried several times to complete its construction and on its umpteenth attempt was nearly there but was a pair of experienced hands short. Up went the shout that Ciderman was needed and soon a knock was being applied to our front door. The small child sent to summon help was in an agitated state of mind but clearly someone was needed across the street. Ciderman was already engaged in a project to preserve his job i.e., meeting a deadline. Ciderwoman therefore dashed to the rescue and soon the huge tent was in place and soundly pitched. At this point Ciderwoman and Ciderman (who had eventually put in a belated appearance)were applauded for their help and deliverance from the violent ways of the steel framed tent. Needless to say we had not been sampling our harvest at the time. If we had been the result could have been somewhat different.

Dacier and Sian