Giant molehills - Leaking tanks - Buds on the trees

Following on from January’s tasting and testing of our new spring batches, we are starting to firm up names – a return of ‘Discrace’, although this will be sweeter than last time, along with stalwart batch ‘Cockhaisy’. Two further batches will see new names – ‘Hollow Man’ and ……hmmm…here we have a conundrum, this forth batch currently eludes us and we have temporarily badged as ‘Twang’…there is something different about this batch, something previously unseen, we recorded a tasting session with our thoughts and views – check it out on our Facebook page and we welcome your suggestions on a name for this batch.

Fruit buds are starting to appear on the trees in the orchard - they should stay tightly wrapped for the time being, allowing us opportunity to finish pruning before the sap starts rising and hopefully none should burst into life before the frosts have well and truly passed – we definitely don’t want a repeat of last year’s fruit crop! We've also enjoyed a visitation by the local moles - some of them seem quite large (see image above).

A minor disaster at the cidery this month – on approaching the barn it was clear we had a problem – a small river of cider flowing from under the doors – not good! Upon investigation we found a faulty valve on the ‘Standen Deliver’ tank. Thankfully it had only been leaking a couple of days – but around 200 pints had been lost – all part of the learning curve, but particularly galling as this batch is arguably one of our best ever!

On a lighter note we were pleased to be able to support the Blatchington Court Trust at their fundraising Charity Comedy Gala at The Old Market in Hove – a fabulous night of fun and laughter with comedians lubricated by bottles of Bignose & Beardy back stage.