Cider apple
Bulmer’s Norman
A large, vigorous French-derived bittersweet imported by H P Bulmer and planted across Herefordshire for heavy cropping and mild, plentiful juice.
Also written Bulmers Norman, Norman, Bulmer Norman.
- Classification
- Bittersweet — Long Ashton classification
- Harvest
- Mid (Late September to mid October)
- Single varietal
- Not suited to a single-varietal cider
- Blend role
- Bulk juice, Bittersweet base
- Origin
- Normandy, introduced to Herefordshire
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Flowering
- Pollination group 3
- Vigour
- Very vigorous — a large tree that takes years to settle to cropping
- Biennial bearing
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Poor — mill soon after picking
How it is classified
Long Ashton classification
Bittersweet
Low acid, high tannin. The class that has no real equivalent in dessert fruit and that defines West Country cider.
Basis: Below about 0.45% w/v acid and above about 0.2% w/v tannin.
A mild bittersweet: above the tannin threshold, but the juice is soft and the class label overstates it.
Every classification on CiderHQ names its system. Why there is more than one.
What it contributes to a blend
A direction, not a measurement. These bands are the level of resolution the evidence supports, and they say which way adding this fruit pushes a blend rather than what the finished cider will be.
| Axis | Typical | Range |
|---|---|---|
| Acid | Very low | |
| Tannin | Moderate | |
| Sugar | Moderate | |
| Bitterness | Moderate | |
| Astringency | Noticeable | |
| Aroma | Restrained | |
| Body | Medium |
The Long Ashton class placement plus consistent description, with wide bands because material grown under this name is not reliably uniform.
Gives mild tannin and a large volume of soft juice, and shapes a blend by dilution more than by character.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Bulmer’s Norman, and for a great deal of cider fruit that is a finding rather than a gap. Bittersweet apples in particular contribute tannin, sugar and body while being close to aromatically mute, and most of what a cider made from them smells of was produced by the fermentation rather than carried in by the fruit. CiderHQ publishes the absence rather than filling the space with descriptors nothing supports.
Measured analysis
Each figure is shown with where and when it was taken. They are not averaged: the same cultivar grown in another climate genuinely gives different numbers, and collapsing them into one would be the most misleading thing this page could do.
Measured on the fruit
Measured on the fruit itself, before anything was done to it. These figures hold whatever was later made from the juice.
| Property | Reading | Where | When | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fruit diameter2 readings, spanning 68–75 mm | 75 mm | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| 68 mm (60–76) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit | |
| Fruit firmness | 26.0 N (11.2–40.7) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Fruit weight | 123 g (89–156) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Juice yield | 545 L/t | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| Starch pattern index | 8.0 SPI | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
Measured on the juice
Measured on juice as pressed, before fermentation. This is where most cider analysis lives and what the classification schemes are defined on.
| Property | Reading | Where | When | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total acid3 readings, spanning 0.170–0.240 % w/v | 0.120–0.220 % w/v | Long Ashton, Somerset, England | Long Ashton analyses, 1903–1985Historic analysis | National Fruit and Cider Institute / University of Bristol |
| 0.220 % w/v | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center | |
| 0.240 % w/v | Long Ashton Research Station, near Bristol, Somerset, England | 1905–1975Historic analysis | Andrew Lea | |
| Total tannin3 readings, spanning 0.200–0.270 % w/v | 0.200–0.300 % w/v | Long Ashton, Somerset, England | Long Ashton analyses, 1903–1985Historic analysis | National Fruit and Cider Institute / University of Bristol |
| 0.200 % w/v | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center | |
| 0.270 % w/v | Long Ashton Research Station, near Bristol, Somerset, England | 1905–1975Historic analysis | Andrew Lea | |
| Brix2 readings, spanning 10.6–11.3 °Bx | 11.3 °Bx | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| 10.6 °Bx (9.8–11.3) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit | |
| pH2 readings, spanning 4.09–4.35 pH | 4.09 pH | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| 4.35 pH (4.31–4.39) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit | |
| Fructose | 65.2 g/L (61.3–69.1) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Glucose | 17.1 g/L (14.9–19.3) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Sorbitol | 18.7 g/L (18.0–19.4) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Specific gravity | 1.046 SG | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| Sucrose | 27.9 g/L (20.0–35.8) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Titratable acidity | 3.1 g/L (3.0–3.2) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Total phenolics | 1840.0 mg/L (1570.0–2110.0) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
5 properties here have been measured more than once. The readings are shown as they were taken and are deliberately not averaged — climate, season, ripeness at picking, the age of the tree and the analytical method all move these numbers, and a single figure would hide every one of them. Where a spread is given below a property, it is the distance between separate studies, not the variation within any one of them.
How these were measured
- Titration of pressed juice, reported as malic acid
- Permanganate titration against indigo carmine, reported as tannic acid equivalent
- Titration, reported as malic acid equivalent
- Published as 2.95 inches; converted at 25.4 mm to the inch
- Juice pressed from 25 fruit, 2015–2017 only. Published as 247 mL/lb; converted at 2.204623 lb to the kilogram
- Mean of the fruit sampled per accession; where a bracket is shown it is one standard deviation either side of the mean, not the observed range. Published to two decimal places and shown at the precision CiderHQ displays for the unit.
- Mean of the fruit sampled per accession; where a bracket is shown it is one standard deviation either side of the mean, not the observed range.
- Cornell generic starch–iodine chart, 1–8, where 1 is no hydrolysis and 8 is complete. Mean of replicate fruit; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of it.
- Penetrometer, mean of replicate fruit; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
- Refractometer on pressed juice. Mean of replicates; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
- Titration to pH 8.2 with sodium hydroxide, reported as malic acid equivalents. Mean of replicates; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
- Meter on pressed juice before fermentation. Mean of replicates; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
- Löwenthal permanganate titration, reported by the source as grams per litre of tannic acid equivalent and stored here as milligrams per litre by exact conversion so that it sits in one column with the Folin–Ciocalteu figures the site also holds. The two methods do not measure the same thing and are not interchangeable.
- Enzymatic assay (Megazyme). Mean of replicates; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
- D-sorbitol/xylitol assay kit (Megazyme), sorbitol dehydrogenase method. Mean of replicates; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
- Titration with alkali, reported as malic acid. Composite figure across many seasons; the source states neither the sample count nor the year of any individual analysis.
- Löwenthal permanganate titration, reported as tannic acid equivalent. Composite figure across many seasons; the source states neither the sample count nor the year of any individual analysis.
- A Herefordshire orchard cultivar analysed on Somerset-grown fruit.
- Given as a range, and a wide one: material distributed under this name has not necessarily been genetically uniform, which is a further reason not to state a single figure.
- A chart position, not a quantity. Almost every accession here scored at or near 8, which says the fruit was picked at or past full starch conversion rather than that the cultivars are alike.
- One harvest at one site. Soluble solids move several degrees between seasons and with crop load.
- A permanganate figure and a Folin–Ciocalteu figure for the same juice can differ by a factor of two. Compare this reading with other permanganate readings, not with a Folin one.
- A composite of Long Ashton analyses reaching CiderHQ through three hands: the station’s own work, a printed compilation (Bulmer’s Pomona, 1987, and Beech and Carr, 1977), and a transcription of that compilation. CiderHQ has seen only the transcription.
- A composite of Long Ashton analyses reaching CiderHQ through three hands: the station’s own work, a printed compilation (Bulmer’s Pomona, 1987, and Beech and Carr, 1977), and a transcription of that compilation. CiderHQ has seen only the transcription. A permanganate figure. It is not comparable with a Folin–Ciocalteu total-phenolics figure for the same fruit, and the two can differ by a factor of two.
Compare within a study to see where these figures sat among the other cultivars the same work analysed — which is a more robust statement than the figures themselves, because absolute values move between laboratories and the ordering inside one study mostly survives.
Watched in the orchard
What named research programmes recorded about this fruit at their own sites. Bloom, harvest and cropping belong to a place and a run of seasons rather than to a cultivar, so they are reported site by site rather than merged.
WSU Mount Vernon cider cultivar trial
Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center, Mount Vernon, Skagit Valley, Washington · 2002–2017 · Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center
Maritime, with cool summers and mild wet winters — the closest North American analogue to the English West Country, and the reason the programme planted European cider fruit here rather than east of the Cascades.
- Mean full bloom
- 8 May
- Harvest
- 12 September
- Bloom density
- 4.5 of 5
- Productivity
- 2.8 of 5
- Growth habit
- Spreading
- Bearing
- Semi Spur
- Alternate bearing
- Semi alternate
- Blind wood
- 1 of 5
- Rootstocks
- MM106
Filed here as sweet.
Color gold, mildly bitter, bittersweet. Good balance, light body for a bittersweet. Cider a little thin, aftertaste short-lived but astringent, builds and lingers, refreshing.
Recorded by the programme from professional cidermakers in the region. One panel, one place, one set of seasons — a description of these ciders rather than of the cultivar everywhere.
Juice characteristics measured on 250 mL of pressed juice; juice yield from 25 fruit, 2015–2017 only. Bloom density, productivity and blind wood are the site’s own subjective 1–5 ratings. Figures are means across the seasons each cultivar was in the trial.
USDA-PGRU Malus germplasm characterisation
USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, in the Finger Lakes region of western New York State · 2017 · Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit
Humid continental, with cold winters and warm summers moderated by the Finger Lakes — a sharper seasonal swing than any of the European cider regions whose fruit the collection holds, and warm enough in late summer to bring acid down faster than a maritime autumn does.
- Held as
- PI 588808, held as “Bulmer Norman”
One harvest season. Fruit assessed for weight, diameter, starch pattern index on the Cornell 1–8 chart and flesh firmness by penetrometer; juice pressed and measured for soluble solids by refractometer, titratable acidity by titration to pH 8.2 as malic acid, pH by meter, total phenolics by Löwenthal permanganate titration as tannic acid equivalent, and glucose, fructose, sucrose and sorbitol by enzymatic assay.
Long Ashton composite cider apple analyses
Long Ashton Research Station, near Bristol, North Somerset, England · 1905–1975 · Andrew Lea
Maritime and mild, with wet autumns and few hard frosts — the climate the English cider cultivars were selected in, and the reason their acid and tannin figures here are the ones the rest of the world has spent a century comparing its own fruit against.
- Held as
- Listed as “Bulmers Norman”, early/mid season
Filed here as bittersweet.
Freshly expressed juice, not finished cider. Acid by straight titration against alkali, reported as malic acid; tannin by Löwenthal permanganate titration, reported as tannic acid equivalent. Composite figures across seventy years of analyses: the source gives neither a sample count nor the year of any individual reading.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Mid
- Flowering
- Pollination group 3
- Vigour
- Very vigorous — a large tree that takes years to settle to cropping
- Cropping
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Poor — mill soon after picking
Mid to late October. Large fruit that falls readily.
Crops heavily and fairly regularly on a very large tree; it was planted as a standard, not a bush.
Large soft fruit that bruises and breaks down quickly.
Mid-season flowering.
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Canker | high | Canker-prone in the Herefordshire orchards it was planted in. |
| Scab | moderate | — |
Juice and pressing
- Very low acid
- Mild tannin
- High juice yield from large fruit
How it is used
- Bulk bittersweet juice for Herefordshire commercial cider
- Widely planted as a standard tree in the first half of the twentieth century
On its own
Not suited to a single-varietal cider
A bulk fruit with nothing distinctive to offer alone.
About Bulmer’s Norman
Bulmer’s Norman is a name that records a company rather than a cultivar. H P Bulmer imported bittersweet material from Normandy in the early twentieth century and distributed it to Herefordshire growers, and what went into the ground under that name became one of the standard bulk bittersweets of the county. It is a very large, very vigorous tree carrying large fruit, planted as a standard in the days when Herefordshire orchards were grazed underneath.
The juice is mild: low acid, moderate tannin, a lot of it per tonne. Its function was volume, and in that it succeeded. The characteristic Herefordshire cider of the mid twentieth century was built on fruit like this, with a small proportion of something more concentrated to give it definition.
The identity question is genuinely unresolved and worth being blunt about. "Norman" was used in Herefordshire as a general term for French-derived bittersweets, material was propagated locally from whatever was growing well, and there is no guarantee that trees labelled Bulmer’s Norman across the county are one clone. This record describes the fruit as it is generally understood and deliberately gives wide analytical bands, because a precise figure would be asserting a uniformity that the plantings do not have.
Its weakness is canker, which on Herefordshire clay has taken a steady toll, and the very large tree size, which fits badly with the mechanised bush orchards that replaced standards from the 1960s onwards. Both are reasons its share of English orchard area has declined even as the ciders it helped define remain in production.
Names, origin and identity
Cultivar naming is the hardest problem in cider fruit data. The same tree carries different names across ten miles, and two different trees have shared a name for two centuries.
Origin · traditional account
Imported from Normandy by H P Bulmer and distributed in Herefordshire under the company’s name. Which Norman cultivar or selection the imported material actually was is not settled, and the English name records the importer rather than the fruit.
| Name | Kind | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Norman | Regional name | Herefordshire. Used alone in Herefordshire orchards for this cultivar and, indiscriminately, for any French-derived bittersweet. An orchard record saying "Norman" identifies nothing. |
Related cultivars
Recorded relationships, including the ones this fruit is routinely confused with.
Similar role
Michelin
The other imported Norman bittersweet planted at scale in England.
Often confused with
Nehou
Part of the same group of English-grown Normans with unreliable labelling.
Often confused with
Handsome Norman
Shares the "Norman" name without being the same fruit or necessarily of Norman origin.
Fruit that plays a similar part
Cultivars sharing a classification under the same system and a comparable role in a blend. Not a similarity score — a stated relationship.
Michelin
A Norman bittersweet raised near Yvetot in the 1870s that became, in England rather than in France, one of the most widely planted cider apples in the world.
Somerset Redstreak
A mild bittersweet planted at very large scale in the late twentieth century for its heavy, regular cropping on bush trees, and a fruit whose commercial importance exceeds its character.
Brown Snout
A Herefordshire mild bittersweet named for the russet patch at its eye, valued for compact growth and regular cropping rather than for concentration.
Hangdown
A Devon mild bittersweet named for its weeping habit, sitting close enough to the tannin threshold that sources place it on both sides of it.
Backwell Red
A north Somerset bittersweet from the village of Backwell, close to Long Ashton itself, giving moderate tannin from a heavy-cropping tree.
Collington Big Bitters
A Herefordshire bittersweet whose name promises more tannin than the analysis delivers, sitting only just over the class threshold.
Styles it is characteristic of
Where it grows
What people ask next
Questions readers ask about the things this page mentions. Each one goes to the section that answers it rather than to a page written to receive the question.
- How do you blend cider
- What is a michelin apple
- How is supermarket cider made
- What are the three counties in cider — Herefordshire, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire — the block of country where England’s cider and, above all, its perry have historically concentrated.
- What is normandy cider
- What is herefordshire cider
Where to go next
- How cider apples are classified — Why there are four schemes and none of them is universal.
- The blend explorer — See which way changing the proportions moves a blend.
- Blending — What a cider maker is actually deciding when they build a blend.
Sources
What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.
Long Ashton Research Station cider fruit analyses
National Fruit and Cider Institute / University of Bristol · research institute · registered as competent for this subject · covers 1903–2003
The foundational body of cider-fruit science in English. Long Ashton produced the acid-and-tannin classification that divides cider apples into sweet, sharp, bittersweet and bittersharp, and analysed hundreds of cultivars grown at its Somerset site. Its figures are historic measurements of specific fruit at a specific place, not universal constants — a distinction CiderHQ preserves in every measurement record that cites it.
A Somerset Pomona: The Cider Apples of Somerset
Liz Copas, The Dovecote Press, 2001. ISBN 9781874336877 · reference work · bibliographic record verified, not opened 2026-08-25
Bibliographic record verified on 2026-08-25 against Open Library: Liz Copas, The Dovecote Press, 2001, ISBN 9781874336877. The author was Long Ashton’s cider pomologist, which is why this work is registered for Somerset cultivar identity at all — it is the nearest thing to a successor to the station’s own descriptions. No copy was opened. Not digitised in any open collection.
University of Reading / Defra, Brogdale · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
The UK national reference collection for apple and pear cultivars. The authority CiderHQ uses for whether two names are the same fruit, which is the central duplicate-resolution problem in cider data.
Hereford Museum of Cider collections and interpretation
Hereford Cider Museum Trust · museum · retrieved 2026-08-24
Traditional record Evidence standard for this record. What that means.