Leeds Beer, Cider and Perry Festival brings together the best selection of real ciders and perries seen in Leeds (and indeed for miles around) in the year.

Real cider and perry are not to be confused with the pasteurised and carbonated fruit-flavoured drinks seen in many pubs. Real cider is made from apples, and nothing else. Real perry is made from pears, and nothing else.

Real cider-making as we know it today came over the channel with the Normans, and that history to a large extent still defines where cider is produced (cider and perry are not “brewed” but “made” or “produced”), in that although apples are grown all over the UK, cider is only made commercially as far north as North Yorkshire.

Making or producing cider or perry is a relatively simple process, or at least it is when compared to brewing beer, both are made by fermenting the juice of the appropriate fruit. Needless to say it’s not quite as simple as that, but certainly it doesn’t involve some of the more complicated parts of the brewing process.

The demise of farm cider-making and the creation of a new generation of large-scale commercial cider-making firms (sound familiar?) in the 19th century has meant that modern day production of cider is concentrated in certain areas.

In the West Country and the Three Counties (Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire) cider apples – that is to say apples grown specifically for the purpose of making cider – are used. In East Anglia and the South-East a blend of cooking and eating apples is used – although even here there is a move towards growing cider apples as well.

What all areas have in common is that most ciders are usually a blend of many different types of apples, as all apples have different characteristics which impart their distinctive taste to the finished product. There has, though, been an increasing trend in recent years to produce single varietal ciders made from the juice of just one type of cider apple.

In the same way that cider can be produced from the juice of any apple, so perry can be made from any pear, but the best drinks are made from perry pears.  Whilst cider can be said to made the length and breadth of
England and Wales, the same is manifestly not true for perry. Orchards of perry trees are becoming increasingly rare – even in their traditional heartland of the Three Counties and the Welsh Borders – although there are also perry producers in Somerset and Norfolk.

A demand for perry exists, but there is a shortage of quality fruit to make it. Why not go along to the cider bar to see what it’s all about?

We are expecting to have a range of cider from dry to sweet with strengths ranging from 6.0% ABV to well over 8.0% ABV!