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The Thoughts Of Chairman Mick
by Mick Lewis
North London's contribution to CAMRA's first Cider and Perry Month seems to have been a success. Four of our pubs had a varying range of ciders and perries, and the Duke of Hamilton in Hampstead had to re-order some more perry when their first batch ran out. When the Branch visited one of our newest pubs - The Oakdale Arms, N4 - the perry gave me my first hangover in over ten years! The Head of Steam at Euston kept a changing range for the whole of October, and so successful was this that they will now have one or two guest ciders all the time, as well as their permanent cider, Westons.
Anyone who still has access to apples may want to turn them into cider. The East London Organic Gardeners have a tabletop press, which was purchased with a grant, and is available for community use. For further information ring 8520 0606. It also seems that The Beer Shop, Pitfield Street, N1 have a press for hire on 7739 3701.
Council investigators in Hereford, trying to track down the source of a recent outbreak of Legionnaires' disease, have discovered the bug in a cooling tower at Bulmers. It is still not certain if this is where the outbreak started, and local enquiries are continuing. So perhaps I'm not the only person to consider most things that come from their factory to be pretty nasty.
Yet another new "designer" drink has appeared on our shelves, this time some form of sparkling perry. It's called Kitsch, and is made from 90% pear and 10% apple juice at 7.5% abv. It has a leopard-skin label, comes complete with a branded straw (?) and is aimed at women aged 18-35. Are they really that gullible? We shall wait and see.
Merseytravel are hoping to ban alcohol on all of their trains. They need the Government to give police the power to arrest people on trains and confiscate their drinks. I can only applaud this initiative. If it cuts down on the number of people buying cans of keg cider and lager, then it must be a good thing.
Finally, Steve Kemp, known to many from the years he worked with me on the cider bar at London Drinker Beer Festival, died in November, aged 44. I first met him in the 1980s and when I say that he was a total loony, it means that he fitted in perfectly with the rest of CAMRA's cider fraternity, complete with his fox glove puppet. Steve was one of only a handful of active members who was a cider drinker and not a lover of real ale, and was one of the earliest supporters of real cider in CAMRA, working at numerous festivals.
He was also instrumental in me meeting my other half, Pam, at the final Surrey Beer Festival in 1996. No, he didn't introduce us. We were playing Matador with a double twelve-domino set and she stopped to ask what we were doing. Matador? I hear you ask. You see, us cider people really are a strange lot!
Mick Lewis
Reproduced from the Full Pint, Issue 23.
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