How Hawkes Cidery is making liquid gold from unwanted apples
If you happened to be at this weekend’s third-tier clash between Forest Green Rovers and Bolton Wanderers, you may have been greeted by a strange sight: fans turning up with bulging sacks of apples.
The club – dubbed the most sustainable in the country – is working with Bermondsey-based cidermaker Hawkes in its annual bid to collect as many apples from people around the UK as possible before they go to waste. So far Hawkes, which was acquired by BrewDog in 2018, has already collected a whopping 13 tonnes of apples from London alone – enough to fill an entire double decker bus.
The company now plans to create a special cider made using only London apples, which it says will allow people to “taste London in a liquid”. “What we have done with the donated apples this year is put them all into a single tank and just left them wild,” explains Elliot Allison, general manager at Hawkes.
“What that means is we haven’t put any particular yeast in there – we’re not trying to create a specific taste. “There are loads of weird and wonderful types of apples in London and when you blend them all together you get something very distinctive.
It’s very acid-driven, because apples that are grown in this country were originally chosen because they were very hardy and could grow anywhere – you’d traditionally make these into chutney and apple pie, so they’re the apples we got donated.
As there are no commercial orchards in London, the London apple cider really is unlike anything else – “It’s something you can’t replicate any other way and that’s what makes it so special,” says Allison.
The apple harvest is already well under way in the UK, but Hawkes is still accepting donations for another two weeks – and you can redeem your fresh fruit for tins of cider at the Bermondsey brewery.
The brewery, located at the end of the famous Beer Mile, is also a destination in its own right, with a bar and kitchen showing off the company’s ciders, which range from crowd-pleasers to unusual creations such as the colab with sake distiller Kanpai, resulting in a sake-cider hybrid infused with yuzu juice.
Another collaboration, with Blackhorse Road-based Renegade Winery, involves using left-over grape skins to make wine cider. Hawkes was founded in 2013 as a ginger beer producer. It wasn’t until a local dropped off apples, wrongly assuming they were making cider, that they changed direction.
“We thought ‘if this many apples are wasted on this street alone, how many are there across London?’”
BrewDog had attempted to produce its own cider before deciding to bring in a dedicated partner. “There were other people who came knocking,” says Allison. “It was about finding the right partner who could do well by our name and our ethos, which is to get better cider into people’s hands. They don’t try to tell us how to make cider – that’s why they wanted to buy us in the first place.”
Overall cider sales in the UK are down in recent years but the “crafted cider” sub category is growing. “People used to take holidays from London to go and pick apples in Kent,” says Allison. “Now apples are in decline because supermarkets are pushing more and more exotic fruit. It’s really sad. I think we can use cider as a way of getting people excited about apples again.”
It’s certainly worked on us. So if you have some apples lying at the bottom of your garden, take a trip to Bermondsey. And if you don’t? Take the trip anyway – have a drink for us while you’re there.
- Hawkes Cidery & Taproom, 86-92 Druid St, SE1 2HQ; 020 3903 8387; wearehawkes.com