Why pay big bucks for your chick beer when you can now make your very own ciders and perry? A tenth of the cost of Smirnoff Ice, and far more pretention-worthy than anything out of a can or a plastic bottle, plus full of nutritious vitamins and minerals. Also, phytochemicals. That’s right; we’re here to help you get shitfaced responsibly. Your liver may not thank me but research (and my luck in singles bars) indicates your colon will.

The best way to thank me is to invite me over to sample a batch and send me home in a limo with a couple of cases.

From The Real Cider and Perry Page. Give it a go and let me know when you’ve got Growers, Merridale, and Strongbow on the run.

…The juice was collected in a 30 gallon plastic bin that was once used to carry Strawberries around. We added 5 LB’s of Raisons and let it ferment outside for 3 months. After 3 months we racked it off into 5 gallon barrels and started drinking it a few months later. Next time I’ll wash the hessian more thoroughly since the cider had a distinct hessianny taste! – this lead to some wag christening it as “Sacks’N’Socks Cider” (Anglo pun intended!). The cider also matures much better in the barrels than it did in bottles – it keeps so well it doesn’t seem worth the effort to bottle.

So all in all very successful – and sooooo easy compared with beermaking!

and here, for ease of use even when drunk, is the recipe index.

Cider Recipes

• Sparkling Dry
• Dry still
• Dry
• Sweet
• Sacks’N’Socks Cider
• Gillian’s First Cider
• Mulled Cider

Perry Recipes

• Gillian’s First Perry

Yup: play along at home as Gillian busts her Perry Cherry.

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