No such thing as pear cider

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xdaver

xdaver

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Does anyone else get annoyed at the rebranding of perry or is it just me?
I always though cider was a drink that had to be made with apples as it has been for hundreads of years until an advertising company decided to shift perry from out of the bargain box of booze coz im a bit skint to lets charge a fortune for the stuff and call it cider.
And dont get me started on the cider/hard cider fiasco
 
Agreed...don't buy it and send an e mail to the company saying why you won't but it.... :D

interesting fact.....

Perry pear trees can live to a great age, and can be fully productive for 250 years. They also grow to a considerable height and can have very large canopies; the largest recorded, a tree at Holme Lacy which still partly survives, covered three quarters of an acre and yielded a crop of 5–7 tons in 1790

from wikipedia
 
Perry - has to be made from Perry pears, rather than ordinary dessert pears, just like west country cider is made from cider apples rather than eating apples, or cooking apples.
'hard cider' in the US was originally a high percentage, about 14% and drank neat, so was rather a hard drink, unlike bourbon, at say 30% which was also a hard liquor but drunk with a mixer.

'cider' has to have a minimum percentage of apple juice in it, but legally can contain other ingredients.

'Pear cider' is just a drink made from all the leftovers that can't be shifted elsewhere - pears and apples of any type, mixed - usually concentrated, with sugar syrups added, fermented out at high alcohol levels then watered down, and force carbonated.
 
What I generally find is that a pear cider is a cider with pear flavourings (i.e. pear juice added), a perry is made with pears by someone who actually gives a damn that it is perry (or a big company that wants to look like it gives a damn)
 
Babycham has a picture of a young chamois deer, but the name implies baby size champagne, then describes itself as champagne perry and is typically served in a champagne glass. There is another popular drink which calls itself cyder, but is a chemical concoction with no apples. I believe the minimum legal limit for cider is 35% apple.
 
As Crastney says only cider made with perry pears can be called perry so the multitude of 'pear ciders' are just that.

Anything made with Sugar IMHO is Tramp Juice and bares no resemblance to a real cider.
 
I wouldn't say pear cider is really a cider.
Hell, I wouldn't consider a lot of commercial ciders a cider.

But as has been said, perry pears must be used to make perry.

We should come up with a new name for these fake "ciders", like, bumfist. "Pear bumfist" "Apple bumfist" names coined.
 
Megaross said:
We should come up with a new name for these fake "ciders", like, bumfist. "Pear bumfist" "Apple bumfist" names coined.
Click to expand...

We have Tramp Juice :lol: :lol:
 
Love it or loathe it (and I would tend towards the latter), from a marketing point of view you have to admit it was a stroke of genius.

As I now live in Worcestershire I am almost ashamed to say that I don't think I have ever tasted a proper traditional perry, but whatever the ingredients of these brews (and that I would be interested to know), they have successfully broken the mental associations with Babycham and Lambrini.

From Wikipedia:
The use of the term "pear cider", instead of perry, has given a new commercial lease of life to a drink that was practically extinct; in two years sales of the drink increased from £3.4 million to £46 million.
Click to expand...
 
thanks for the replies learnt some new facts :D
I remember drinking perry from a 3ltr box from kwik saves many years ago when times where hard, I agrre it was a stroke of genius going from that to 2 quid a 500ml bottle
 
I made a 'PERRY' here in turkey from fresh pressed pears - obviously not real perry pears as dont think anyone can get them here. Non the less it turned out superb done with an SN9 vintners yeast. Loads of peeps liked it too so was considering calling it Bebekcham ! (bebek = baby in turkish!) :cheers:
 
i remember when I started making cider back in 2004, a friend of mine purchased some perry from a friend in The Forest of Dean - real ooh aah cider country, in a 2 litre white plastic bottle, with name 'Perry' written on in black marker pen with shaky hand. So shaky hand in fact that it looked like 'pervy'.

His new nickname became "Tharg; drinker of pervy"
 
+1 for perry being only made from perry pears while pear cider is apple cider made with any old pear juice.

Btw...babycham is real perry...I remember it could be either sweet (blue foil) or dry (greeny-blue foil).

F
 
Megaross said:
We should come up with a new name for these fake "ciders", like, bumfist. "Pear bumfist" "Apple bumfist" names coined.
Click to expand...

I suggest "fauxider". Short, to the point, and accurate.

Although if you want to go down the "bumfist" route there's a good example of how effective something like that could be. After Rick Santorum (a right-wing US ex-senator) made some disparaging remarks about gay marriage in 2003, Dan Savage (a gay US journalist) started a campaign to get "Santorum" defined as something rather unpleasant. Rick Santorum wasn't very happy about this - who would be? - however it only became a real liability when Santorum decided to run for the presidency during the last election. However his efforts to stop Savage backfired, as a third* campaign saw "Rick" redefined as something equally unpleasant (second definition on the page). And while either is unpleasant on its own, when combined they are truly vile.

* in the interim, Savage had launched a campaign to redefine "saddlebacking". Perhaps unsurprisingly, he has a reputation for both controversial statements and for poking fun at right-wing politicians and journalists. Just recently he was on Bill Maher's show along with Grover Norquist, another far-right Republican, and Norquist implied that Savage's marriage was fake because he and Terry Miller, Dan's husband, couldn't have kids without outside intervention (their son is adopted). Savage responded by saying that "I'm always telling people who say two men can't make a baby, anything is possible for God. I'm going to keep inseminating my husband and keep my fingers crossed." Norquist was not amused. The video went viral.
 

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