The sun has got his hat on!

The cider drinking weather seems to finally have arrived!

This weekend Salt Hill Cider will be available at two local festivals, well worth visiting;

The Reading Beer & Cider Festival is on from today and will have hundreds of top quality ciders and perries to try.

The Crosses Corner in Peascod Street Windsor are holding their first ever festival this weekend and your local cider will be available all weekend so if you are looking for somewhere for a few drinks over the bank holiday please pop along.

Happy drinking!

Greg

 

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 2,500 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 4 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

 

Winter blues

2013 is going to be quite a challenge for cider makers; the apple harvest in the autumn was the worst anyone can remember and in my local area the crop was disastrous! For the first time ever I had to get fruit in from other areas of England and supplies dried up completely leaving me way short of the amount that will be needed through the year.

Salt Hill Cider will be available at local pubs and festivals this year but stocks will likely run out before the end of summer. We are off to Somerset this week for a bit of wassailing and we will give it our all in the hope that the harvest in 2013 will be a bumper one in contrast to the bare sodden orchards of 2012.

       

 

Where are all the apples?

Late September and the trees ought to be groaning with apples ready for harvesting but due to this year’s weather there are hardly any apples to be found around the local area! The cold weather and heavy rains we suffered at the vital blossom time in May have led to a disastrous low crop for this autumn and I am struggling to find any fruit to make next year’s cider. Despite the poor summer this year demand has been high for Salt Hill Cider and so I was hoping to make at least as much this year but unless I can source some apples soon I may have to issue ration books for next year!

 

 

This Sunday Salt Hill Cider will be available at this event in the town of the Cox’s Orange Pippin apple

Colnbrook Apple Fair

 

Summertime blues

Well it’s July apparently though it looks more like October! Surprisingly the poor weather hasn’t dampened cider drinkers thirst and quite a bit of Salt Hill Cider has been supped already this year. The recent cider festival at Windsor Racecourse was a great success and we have been invited back to provide cider at the Ronnie Scott’s evening at Windsor on the evening of Monday 16th July so hopefully by then the summer will have started. This event is closely followed by our local CAMRA Beer & Cider Festival which is being held at Windsor Farm Shop over the weekend from Friday 20th July. Salt Hill Cider will be in attendance along with several great ciders from Berkshire and further afield. Myself and my trusty assistant Keith Smith will be around most of the weekend and look forward to meeting cider fans old and new. Let’s hope we have a great July and August to make up for the poor showing of May and June and that get some decent weather for sitting outside sipping cider.   Cheers! 

 

Flaming June!

The weather so far this year has been what you might call a “mixed bag”, mainly rain lashed cold and gloomy with a few days of searing heat and blazing sun thrown in just to confuse us!

June has been poor so far but despite this Salt Hill Cider has been shifting rather well as people look to take solace in the pubs.

Hopefully the weather is going to spring into life just in time for the local cider event of the year which will happen on Monday 18th June; Windsor Race Course Cider Festival will have a great evening of horse racing and cider drinking.

This is one of the few festivals where you get the chance to talk to the cider makers who are selling direct to the public, myself and Keith Smith will be there flying the flag for Berkshire cider alongside Tutts Clump and Ciderniks from west Berkshire. There will be cider makers from all over England as well and  it promises to be a great night out so please come along and give your support.

If you can’t make it along to this event you will be able to find Salt Hill Cider at most of the local beer festivals and many of the best pubs around Berkshire and Buckinghamshire so if your local doesn’t have it ask them why!

Here’s hoping that the rest of the summer will be filled with sunny days with blue skies and not a cloud to spoil the view and making the perfect backdrop for lazy days spent drinking good cider.