Nurturing Creativity - The Harvest June 8, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : video, cider , 1 comment so farFeaturing a family that’s been in the business for about three centuries, nurturing around 350 a year. Harvest is the start of the process, when they are nice and ripe.
There are about 200 creatives in the top field, and maybe 150 in the bottom field. being creative need lots of praise, to massage their egos but you can’t leave them in too long or else they become temperamental.
They use a hydraulic juicer, because modern ones give 20% more juice. The distribution centre is for all the companies that need creativity.
Online and direct marketing campaigns. Computer games and animation industries. TV ads.
Testing new blends like the Swindon rootstock grafted to Cornwall foliage. Any rotten uns, just get mulched up and sent up to Chelsea, for the flower show. A lot of people pontificate about the future of advertising but you can’t beat good ideas.
Captured on canvas - I’m in a painting from Bastille Day June 6, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Art, London, cider , 2commentsThursday is the weekend
Yesterday was a Thursday but I decided to declare it a weekend day and take a day off since it the weather looked very promising. We went for a pleasant canalside walk, explored Islington’s Chapel Market, visited the canal museum and had a smashing lunch at the Charles Lamb inn.
Bastille Day
I first discovered that particular pub on Bastille Day least year, July 14th when a celebration of the French holiday was organised in conjunction with the review site Trusted Places and sponsorship from Ricard. So this is where the painting comes into it. The event made a colourful street scene with petanque being played in the road outside the pub, an accordian player and an artist painting with oil colours. So yesterday after ordering my smoked trout with beetroot and horseradish I notice a painting of that very scene hanging up on the wall inside the pub. “Ah that’s the painting we watched being half finished on Bastille day. Wait a minute, that’s me !” How did I know it was me? Well I was still wearing the same jacket. So here it is:
Nick Botting
The artist is a renowned portrait painter, local to Islington, Nick Botting who once painted a portrait of Ian Botham and has been one of the Artists at Kew.
Linda dug out her photos from the event last year, which show the painting at an earlier stage, before the man in the beige jacket was added.
London social media development February 14, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : social media, social objects, London, cider , add a commentIt was Wednesday evening so I went along to the Coach and Horses in Greek St, Soho to take part in an early user testing session for i-together’s new twitter and google maps mashup project. The usability test was run by Ofer Deshe of Flow Interactive who introduced himself as coming from a background in cognitive psychology, using techniques borrowed from ethnographical anthropology, so being chosen as the user to be observed was something of a privilege. I was sat in front of a laptop running a web service with no explanation or guidance, asked simply to explore and try to make sense of it. Well I just hope my slightly flummoxed attempts at navigation and comments provided some useful data.
Afterwards we had some wide ranging conceptual discussions which touched on ideas about public identity and personal security, activities or events as social objects, the natural development of some online communities into face-to-face meetups and much more. There’s still a fair amount of work to be done on the prototype service, both in explaining the concepts and making a winning user interface, but if anyone can do it then Luke, Benjie and Jof are in position to succeed with support from the vibrant and friendly London social media development community.
The Coach and Horses is also the venue for Social Media Café on Friday, and I was happily able to use the free wifi to update the cider wiki to mention the Westons Old Rosie currently on tap.
Death of a community member January 12, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Community, online facilitation, UK, cider, listservs , add a commentOn the E-Mint listserv there’s a discussion about what happens after the death of a community member. Should their profile be taken down? Can the next of kin access their email?
My story involves the death of a prominent member, waybackmachine ,
wiki and transfer of websites.
A prominent member of uk cider stopped posting for several months
and people began to inquire after him. Eventually his wife found the
group and explained that he had been in a car accident and was
recovering very slowly. Then we heard that he suddenly died of a heart
attack.
I was approached by a couple of members who were concerned that
Paul’s own website and accumulated content should not be lost to
posterity and they tried writing to his wife as tactfully as possible,
but understandably she had bigger worries at the time.
So I created a wiki page linked from the members page, which contains
tributes written by the group as a reaction to hearing the tragic
news, and links to Paul’s site as archived on the “waybackmachine”
where I assume the content will remain indefinitely, even if the
original site is taken down. It’s the saddest task for a facilitator,
but seemed very necessary.
http://ukcider.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Paul_Gunningham_In_Memorium
Interestingly I later discovered that the domain names and content had
passed on to another small scale web developer in a similar niche. I
don’t know how this was arranged, but I assume it was agreed with the
next of kin.
If somebody dies owning domain names and nobody inherits them, then
they eventually expire and come up for resale. There are then
companies who specialise in auctioning off the means to acquire them.
Wiki on your iPod May 15, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : UK, cider, Wiki , 1 comment so farWhile I was away enjoying some rare face to face with ukcider members in Rosie’s Dorset barn, another section of the internet group was meeting in the midlands, and one major wiki contributor was inspired to do something clever with the Perl scripting language.
Adapting a script for reformatting mediawiki pages into “notes” format for iPod we now have available a facility for downloading the entire Online Cider Pub Guide to a mobile device.
Get the Cider Pub Guide on your iPod
Open letter to NACM April 19, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : cider , add a commentAs copublished on u k c i d e r blog
to Nick Bradstock at National Association of Cider Makers on 01823 490336 or nickbrads@btinternet.com
Dear Nick,
ukcider is a community of 500+ people appreciative of craft cider and
perry. We claim amongst our midst a substantial minority of members
who are actively involved in the production of real cider and perry on
a small scale, and maintain the definitive online guide to good cider
outlets and cider making advice.
I’m writing to you today on behalf of ukcider to endorse the letter
which one of our members, Roy Bailey has recently sent in regarding
the 7,000 litre exemption as adopted below:
“We understand that the National Association of Cider Makers is in support
of the EU’s proposal to get rid of the 70 hectolitres duty exemption on
cider and perry.
We believe that this would be a grave mistake of the part of the NACM,
and would be disastrous as far as craft cider makers are concerned,
leading to many of them ceasing production.
The present exemption is a valuable concession which has enabled a large
number of small cider makers to start up in recent years, unbedevilled
with the paperwork and expense attendant on paying duty. They have been
able to produce interesting and distinctive products, making use of
fruit that might otherwise go to waste, and sell their cider and perry
at a competitive price. Like the micro-brewers, they have been
instrumental in introducing new tastes and flavours which the larger
commercial producers fight shy of.
Instead of being confined to the West Country and East Anglia, cider
making is now carried on in the majority of the counties of England and
Wales, and even in Scotland.
Furthermore, many of these craft producers have sought out and rescued
rare and threatened varieties of apples and pears, grafting them and
planting new orchards which add diversity to the countryside and to the
national stock of fruit.
The brewing industry has only recently been able to enjoy a concession
similar to cider’s duty exemption in the form of Progressive Beer Duty.
This has enabled new breweries to start up, and existing ones to either
invest in new equipment or maintain competitive prices.
Rather than abolish the 70 hl concession, it should be retained and
amended so that duty is only paid on the excess over that limit when it
occurs, rather than on the whole of the production as at present. The
current arrangement penalises those producers who wish to produce
between 70 and about 140 hl per annum.
If the NACM goes ahead with its support of this EU proposal (and once
again this is a case of the EU sticking its nose into something that is
not its business) then it will only provide more ammunition for those
who believe that the NACM exists only to further the interests of the
big commercial producers, rather than of cider makers in general.
Regards,
Andy Roberts
ukcider convenor
http://ukcider.co.uk
ukcider bargain - Thatchers £1 a bottle March 24, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : cider , add a commentukcider has a new blog where I’ve just published details of a fantastic deal to get one third off a bottle of Thatchers renowned single varietal ciders.
You can order Coxs, Katy or Spartan or a mixture. It’s up to you and if you live within striking distance of Gloucestershire then you could save the delivery charge too. Considering that these 500ml bottles normally go for £1.59 or even £1.79 in the supermarkets I reckon that’s a pretty neat bargain at just ONE POUND only. You might want to tell your cider drinking friends about this one. Here’s the link to the cider blog again.
Word of Mouth January 30, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : cider, Wiki , add a commentA Normandy cider producer asked where she could find UK cider enthusiasts with a view to taking out an advertisement, for example in the specialist press - monthly magazine.
So I wrote to the ukcider list, but I’m publishing here as well because there are some generalised ideas contained within which are also directly relevent to a couple of other projects I’m currently starting on.
…
There are two things I want to suggest, arising from your request. The first continues the discussion I was having with Andrew recently about competion. It strikes me that here in the UK, craft ciders are in competion for people’s money with other “luxury” products to a much larger extent than between each other. Beer and wine are probably the main competition, but also other beverages, fine food and perhaps even entertainments. But I won’t stretch it too far.
Secondly, In the modern connected world there is the idea that “word of mouth” is becoming more important than advertising. 
UK cider enthusiasts are right here on this group/forum/wiki and you can engage with us by simply writing about your own product and activities on a regular basis, as long as it takes the form of participation in a conversation not just posting one way announcements. It’s always a good idea to enhance and keep your own details up to date on the wiki as well - in your case this could be on the France page - Cidernaut_guide_to_France
as well as on the buy cider page if you are intending to provide an online order service to the UK
One active example, not a producer but a publican, is Steve Marquis of
the Blue Bell at Halkyn in North Wales.
.
Finally, there is now one trial commercial linked graphic advertisement on the http://ukcider.co.uk/buy.htm static page which is not exclusive and helps toward the annual bandwith fees for the wiki. I don’t believe that impinges on the community in any way by being there, and if you are interested in something similar then do get in touch.
Cider videos December 17, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : video, cider, Wiki , add a commentIn my role as technology steward as well as convenor for the ukcider community, I need to keep an eye on mainstream developments on the web. Now 2006 was the year that webstreaming video really came of age, especially since the format wars were finally settled with Flash coming out the winner, and YouTube the social video platform of preference. So people are starting to post links to videos in the mailing list which others can then watch and share the experience. But just as with Flickr for still photos, only a minority in the community are actually going to sign up for an account, learn how to upload, tag, favourite, playlist and join groups etc. Others will just consume.
So I’ve added a plugin to the ukcider mediawiki to enable it to display videos from YouTube and GoogleVideo directly onto the page, which means that in future it will be possible to add relevent media to the narrative text within the pages of the dynamic work of reference and generally wonderful thing that is the cider wiki
For now, here’s a page with a few choice cider videos:
http://ukcider.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Cider_Videos
Homemade Scratter for a cider press October 12, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Community, cider, Wiki , add a comment
Buy books about real cider making on a small scale and homemade apple cider press plans at the ukcider bookshop with Amazon UK
A ukcider member who calls himself “Ni. (Marches Cyder Circle)” has created a great new page on the cider wiki all about his homemade scratter, dubbed the “codling grinder”.
I just love these kind of low-tech, practical and cheap solutions, and so do plenty of potential cidermakers around the world it seems. A similar page by Ray which shows how to make a home made apple press out of bits of plywood and four-by–two has received a phenomenal numberof page views ( > 12,000) and regularly comes up in the most popular searches. The accompanying discussion page also gets comments and questions which the author happily answers.
Recently a new member arrived on the mailing list having built the press from Ray’s instructions and made their own cider the year before. They were so pleased with the results they wanted to learn more about it. I’m sure that Ni’s scratter will be similarly emulated around the world, because you do actually need both machines in order to make apple juice or cider.
There are also some images and description of a home-made rotating “scratcher” for
milling apples included in the book: “Success with Apples and Pears to Eat and Drink” by Alan Rowe ( available from the cider bookshop) but I bet they’re not as much fun as Ni’s page with his codling scratter for a cider press.
is an online professional who initiated DARnet 
