To toast Queen Adelaide in episode 015, we had some samples from Paracombe Premium Perry in the Adelaide Hills.
Damian McArdle, the Perry Maker and fourth generation pear grower, sent us:
- The Berg, a sweet style perry
- The Triumph, Paracombe’s original style of perry
- XXXXXX, their soon to be released Ginger Beer that we were not allowed to name at the time of recording
First of all, we got our heads around the concept of perry; it is NOT pear cider.
Perry is the drink you get when you apply the cider-making process to pears.
So, for the record, cider is the drink from fermented apples, perry is the drink from fermented pears.
The perrys
We started with The Berg and all thought it was juicy, sweet and pleasant, with authentic pear flavour.
Then we moved to The Triumph and our worlds changed.
The Triumph was a fine, dry perry unlike anything we had tasted before.
Seriously, there was nothing in the taste memory to compare it to, except for a deep layer of dried pear flavour.
There is a reason this drink is almost always sold out!
The ginger beer
Finally, we tried the Ginger Beer without a name, having been warned it is so strong, and hot and gingery we will feel like we had been hit somewhere vulnerable.
We took the unprecedented action of photographing each other drinking the ginger beer, just to capture reactions for medical science. You can see the process below.
But in short, it was good, strong ginger beer with an erupting layer of heat that develops the more you drink, although not with quite the violent side effects we’d been warned about. We would say, rather, that this is a serious ginger beer.