I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world.	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he's experimenting with federated platforms . He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance, and can found on the PlusPora diaspora pod. He hates cell-phones.

Previous Entry First Entry

York Cider (and Beer) Festival 2013 I did not have a Scrumpy Jack with dinner last night. The reason is that I spent most of the afternoon at the York Cider Festival. Technically, it's the 'York Beer & Cider Festival', but with over 100 ciders and perries to sample. I did not try them all; I did manage to taste fifteen or twenty, though. It worked like this: You paid your entry fee, £4, I think it was, plus a small deposit on a glass, well, a 'plastic,' in either pint, half or half-pint goblet. All save the goblet could be returned at the end, or you could keep it, of course. The glasses were marked for pints, halves and thirds. The staff was happy to let you have a taste of things before you committed to a full measure; especially in cider-land, I think. Serving in thirds, was a great idea, as well, since it meant you could enjoy a bit more of quite a few ciders without fear of becoming utterly over-indulged. So I settled in at one end of the bar with my glass and my program and began to narrow in on the sorts of ciders that most pleased my palate. The two gentlemen, both CAMRA volunteers, who were running the cider bar were most helpful, happy to discuss types and processes and what was good last year, and what was not worth wasting valuable drinking time on. The ciders were marked with a five point sweet-to-dry scale, with 1 being very sweet and 5 being very dry indeed. I fairly quickly determined that '3' was my (ahem) sweet spot. That still left a lot of ground to cover. After hours of research, I can present my findings to the committee. If your tastes are similar to mine, then the one that stands head and shoulders about the rest is Hecks 'Port Wine of Glastonbury.' 'Port Wine of Glastonbury' is an apple variety, and if this is the sort of cider it makes, then it's a variety well worth keeping an eye on. Just staggeringly good. It only stands head, not head and shoulders, above my second choice, the Thistly Cross 'Whisky Cask.' A solid second place finisher, which stands shoulders above the rest. The question that remains is this: where can I find them? Ah, well, I suppose that's what the web is for. The festival was well worth the time spent. Among other things, I learned a bit more about CAMRA, including the fact that the ones running the bar at the festival are CAMRA volunteers. Hmm. It's an annual event, you say. Right ... another organization to join. Meanwhile, back to Scrumpy Jack for a while. Cheers ... Luddite'sLog, 20 September 2013 © 2013 Jeff Berry

Next Entry Last Entry