Perry pear
Barnet
A very late-flowering Three Counties perry pear of mild juice, carrying six recorded synonyms and one that collides with a cider apple.
Also written Barnet Pear, Barn Pear.
- Classification
- Sweet — Perry pear classification
- Harvest
- Mid (Late September to mid October)
- Single varietal
- Rarely bottled on its own
- Blend role
- Bulk juice, Sugar and body
- Origin
- The Three Counties
- Species
- Pyrus communis
- Flowering
- Very late flowering band
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Biennial bearing
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Poor — mill soon after picking
How it is classified
Perry pear classification
Sweet
Low acid, low tannin. Mild perry pears giving soft, light perry.
Long Ashton recorded 2.8 g/L acid and 0.9 g/L tannin — low on both counts, which places it in the sweet class of the perry scheme.
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 | Low | |
| Tannin | Light | |
| Sugar | Moderate | |
| Bitterness | Slight | |
| Astringency | Slight | |
| Aroma | Present | |
| Body | Medium |
Long Ashton’s figures — 2.8 g/L acid, 0.9 g/L tannin, SG 1.052 — and a modern survey reading of 5.0 g/L acid on the same variety.
A mild, light juice with little to push against: pleasant rather than structural, and a pear that fills a blend rather than shaping it.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Barnet, 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.
| Property | Reading | Where | When | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Specific gravity2 readings, spanning 1.052–1.053 SG | 1.052 SG | Long Ashton Research Station, near Bristol, North Somerset, England | 1903–1963Historic analysis | National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology |
| 1.053 SG | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2022–2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) | |
| Titratable acidity2 readings, spanning 2.8–5.0 g/L | 2.8 g/L | Long Ashton Research Station, near Bristol, North Somerset, England | 1903–1963Historic analysis | National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology |
| 5.0 g/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2022–2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) | |
| Total tannin2 readings, spanning 90.0–410.0 mg/L | 90.0 mg/L | Long Ashton Research Station, near Bristol, North Somerset, England | 1903–1963Historic analysis | National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology |
| 410.0 mg/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2022–2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) | |
| Free amino nitrogen | 20.5 mg/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2022–2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) |
| Phenolic acids | 200.0 mg/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2022–2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) |
| Proline | 99.5 mg/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2022–2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) |
| Total amino acids | 110.7 mg/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2022–2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) |
| Total phenolics | 610.0 mg/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2022–2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) |
3 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
- Juice density. Published by the source in the four-figure form (1058) and written here in full.
- Titration, reported as malic acid. Published as a percentage and stored here in grams per litre by exact conversion — one per cent weight per volume is ten grams per litre — so that the historic figures sit in one column with the modern survey the site also holds.
- Löwenthal permanganate titration. Published as a percentage and stored here in milligrams per litre by exact conversion — one per cent weight per volume is ten thousand milligrams per litre — so that the historic figures sit in one column with the modern survey the site also holds.
- Juice pressed from fruit collected in the Three Counties and frozen before analysis. Published to five decimal places and shown at the three the site displays.
- Titration, reported as malic acid.
- “True tannin” — the polymerised phenolic fraction, measured separately from the phenolic acids. Published in grams per litre and stored here in milligrams per litre by exact conversion.
- Phenolic acids measured separately from the tannin fraction. Published in grams per litre and stored here in milligrams per litre by exact conversion.
- The sum of the true tannin and phenolic acid fractions as the surveyor reports it. Published in grams per litre and stored here in milligrams per litre by exact conversion.
- HPLC. The whole amino acid pool by mass, assimilable and non-assimilable together.
- Free amino nitrogen, calculated from the individual amino acids as nitrogen available to yeast. Excludes proline.
- HPLC.
- Long Ashton perry pear analyses, reaching CiderHQ through a National Association of Cider Makers report compiled in 2010 from the station’s material. The underlying volume is Luckwill and Pollard, Perry Pears (University of Bristol, 1963), which CiderHQ has verified bibliographically and not opened. The compiler warns that juice quality in perry pears improves markedly with tree age, and that young trees give weaker acid and tannin and a lower gravity. A single figure for a perry pear is therefore a figure for a tree of some unstated age.
- Long Ashton perry pear analyses, reaching CiderHQ through a National Association of Cider Makers report compiled in 2010 from the station’s material. The underlying volume is Luckwill and Pollard, Perry Pears (University of Bristol, 1963), which CiderHQ has verified bibliographically and not opened. A permanganate figure, not comparable with a Folin–Ciocalteu total-phenolics figure.
- One sample from one source in one season. The surveyor reports the same variety differing markedly between years, sites and tree types, and publishes the samples separately rather than pooling them.
- Measured as “true tannin” — the polymerised phenolic fraction — separately from the phenolic acids. It is not a Folin–Ciocalteu total and not a permanganate total, and should be compared only with figures produced the same way.
- Perry pear juice runs far lower in assimilable nitrogen than cider apple juice, a difference the Long Ashton workers reported and this survey confirms across most of the varieties sampled. Several readings here sit below the level at which a ferment is generally expected to need feeding.
- Proline is an amino acid a wine or cider yeast cannot assimilate without oxygen, so it does not count towards usable nitrogen. In these pear juices it routinely exceeds the whole assimilable amino pool, which is why a perry must can be rich in amino acids and starved of nitrogen at the same time.
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.
Long Ashton perry pear varieties
Long Ashton Research Station, near Bristol, North Somerset, England · 1903–1963 · National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology
Maritime and mild. The station sat outside the perry counties it studied — the pears are Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire fruit — which is worth holding in mind when a figure here is compared with one measured on fruit picked in the Three Counties.
- Harvest
- Early October
- Growth habit
- Medium–large
- Bearing
- Slightly biennial
- Held as
- Listed as “Barnet”
Low acid and tannin. Pleasant, light, average quality.
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 analysis: specific gravity, acidity by titration as malic acid, tannin by Löwenthal permanganate titration. Acid and tannin are published as percentages and stored here in grams per litre by exact conversion. Vigour, cropping habit, maturity window and a vintage quality assessment are the compiler’s summary of the station’s descriptions.
Three Counties perry pear juice survey
Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties — the perry country itself, rather than a research station elsewhere · 2022–2024 · Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell)
The lower Severn and Wye vales: mild, wet, and the only ground in Britain where perry pears have ever been grown at scale. Fruit was collected across three autumns, and the survey reports each collection separately rather than pooling the seasons.
- Held as
- Sample B
Juice from single varieties, frozen before analysis. Specific gravity; titratable acidity by titration as malic acid; “true tannin” and phenolic acids measured as separate fractions; individual amino acids by HPLC, with free amino nitrogen calculated from them and proline reported apart because yeast cannot assimilate it anaerobically. Where samples differed by location, tree age or year, they are reported separately.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Mid
- Flowering
- Very late flowering band
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Cropping
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Poor — mill soon after picking
Early to mid October at Hartpury. The collection records it among the pears ripening in the main October band rather than with the early harvest fruit. The National Perry Pear Collection records it ripening in the first half of October at Hartpury, which agrees with the window recorded here.
Long Ashton recorded it as a medium-large tree cropping slightly biennially.
Soft-fleshed and quick to go over, like most of the class.
One of only nine varieties the National Perry Pear Collection places in its very late flowering band, which narrows the field of possible pollinators sharply. Pears are not self-fertile, so a very late variety planted among mid-season neighbours can flower largely alone.
Pears are not self-fertile. A variety needs another in blossom at the same time to set fruit, which is why the flowering band matters more in a perry orchard than the harvest window does.
Ripening moves with the site and the season. Where the National Perry Pear Collection’s observation at Hartpury falls in a different band from the window recorded here, both are kept rather than one overwriting the other.
Juice and pressing
- Low acid
- Low tannin
- Moderate gravity
How it is used
- Blended for volume in a Three Counties perry rather than for character.
- Recorded by Long Ashton as pleasant, light and of average quality.
On its own
Rarely bottled on its own
Long Ashton called the quality average and the juice light. Nothing in the record suggests it was made alone.
About Barnet
Barnet is a mild perry pear of the Three Counties, low in both acid and tannin, and it is on this site for two reasons that have nothing to do with the perry it makes. The first is that it is one of the few perry pears measured twice, sixty years apart, by two independent programmes — and the two disagree. Long Ashton put its acid at 2.8 grams per litre; a Three Counties survey in the 2020s put it at 5.0. Neither is wrong. A perry pear’s acid depends on the tree, the season and above all the age of the tree, and Long Ashton’s own compiler warned that young trees give much weaker juice than old ones.
The second is the name. The National Perry Pear Collection, which DNA-profiles the trees it holds, records six synonyms for Barnet: Barn, Barn Pear, Brown Thorn, Brown Thorn Pear, Hedgehog and Hedgehog Pear. One of those, Brown Thorn, is also the name of an English bittersweet cider apple, which has its own page here. Nothing in practice confuses the two — an apple and a pear are not mistaken for each other in an orchard — but it is a clean illustration of why CiderHQ never treats a fruit name as an identifier on its own.
For a maker, Barnet is a filling pear. It brings gravity and volume and very little grip, and a blend built on it needs something with acid or tannin beside it. Its very late flowering is the more practical constraint: the collection places it in a band shared by only eight other varieties, and a pear that flowers alone sets very little fruit.
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
Unrecorded. Barnet is one of the many perry pears that arrive in the record already named and already old.
| Name | Kind | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Barn | Regional name | Recorded by the National Perry Pear Collection, whose identifications rest on DNA profiling of the trees it holds. |
| Brown Thorn | Disputed identity | The collection lists Brown Thorn and Brown Thorn Pear among Barnet’s synonyms. Brown Thorn is also the name of an English bittersweet cider apple with its own record on this site. The two are different species and there is no suggestion of confusion between them in practice, but the collision is why a perry pear name has to be read with its species attached. |
| Hedgehog | Regional name | Recorded alongside Hedgehog Pear by the collection. The name presumably describes the fruit or the tree; no source CiderHQ has seen explains it. |
The National Perry Pear Collection’s identifications are supported by DNA analysis of the trees it holds, which is why they are treated here as the stronger account where they conflict with a documentary one. Where the collection records a name for two varieties it holds as distinct, the name identifies a group of trees rather than one variety, and fruit offered under it needs checking against something other than its label.
Why it matters
- One of the twenty varieties Long Ashton analysed and one of the thirty-eight in the modern Three Counties survey, which makes it unusually well measured for a pear nobody claims is important.
Related cultivars
Recorded relationships, including the ones this fruit is routinely confused with.
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.
Green Longdon
The senior member of the Longdon group, widely grown in north-west Gloucestershire and carrying six synonyms, three of which other Longdons also claim.
Bartestree Squash
A late-ripening Herefordshire squash pear of notably low acid, and one of the mildest juices in the modern Three Counties survey.
De Cloche
A bell-shaped Domfrontais poiré pear, planted alongside Plant de Blanc and giving a mild, sweet juice.
Green Roller
An early-flowering Three Counties perry pear with the highest assimilable nitrogen recorded in the modern survey.
Potato Pear
A heavily russeted Monmouthshire perry pear whose name describes a fruit that looks like a potato, giving a mild, sweet juice.
Arlingham Squash
A soft-fleshed perry pear from the Severn parish of Arlingham, sharing its second name with Taynton Squash without being related to it.
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.
- What is perry — Perry is an alcoholic drink made by fermenting the juice of pears, traditionally of specific perry pear cultivars rather than eating pears. It is to pears what cider is to apples, and has its own history in the three counties of England and in Normandy.
- What is juice blending
- What is maceration in cider making — Maceration is letting milled pomace stand before pressing, so that enzymes soften the tissue and phenolics and aroma move from the skins into the juice. It raises both colour and tannin, and raises the risk of oxidation with them.
- How are perry pears classified — Perry pears are conventionally divided by acid and tannin into sweet, medium sharp, bittersharp and bittersweet, following the scheme used in the English perry literature. Sorbitol content matters too, and it does not appear in the classes.
- What is still perry
- 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.
Perry Pear Varieties from Long Ashton (NACM Short Report 8.2)
National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology · research institute · passage verified 2026-08-25 · covers 1903–1963
A four-page compilation, dated March 2010, of the Long Ashton perry pear varieties: for each of twenty pears, its vigour, cropping habit, maturity window, specific gravity, acidity, tannin and an assessment of vintage quality. It rests on Luckwill and Pollard’s Perry Pears (1963), which CiderHQ has verified bibliographically and has not opened, so the figures are held at traditional-record tier rather than at research tier despite originating in institutional analysis. This is the report that ended a two-sprint gap: before it, no perry pear page on the site carried a cultivar-specific number.
Perry Pears and Perry — Research and Survey Work
Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) · specialist publication · passage verified 2026-08-25 · covers 2022–2024
Ongoing survey work by a cider and perry technologist who has taught production for decades, published openly and updated annually; retrieved and read in full on 2026-08-25. Thirty-eight single-variety perry pear juices analysed for gravity, titratable acidity, the tannin and phenolic acid fractions separately, and the individual amino acids by HPLC — the last of which nobody else has done at this scale for perry. Not peer-reviewed, and the author is explicit that the accompanying fermentation trials are initial surveys needing statistical treatment before differences are called significant; CiderHQ repeats that wherever the fermentation results are used.
National Perry Pear Centre, Hartpury · specialist organisation · passage verified 2026-08-24
Read on 2026-08-24 — and the address CiderHQ had registered, perrypears.co.uk, is no longer the Centre at all. It fails the TLS handshake over https, and over plain http it resolves to a Sedo domain-parking page: an earlier pass in this sprint recorded it as retrieved on the strength of an HTTP 200, which was wrong, and the correction is the point. The Centre publishes at nationalperrypearcentre.org.uk. It is the closest thing British perry has to an identity authority: it holds at least two examples of most known varieties, states that the DNA of most of them has been determined and is used as an aid to identification, and publishes a variety register with synonym lists. Its 121-variety register is transcribed into the perry pear records, including the nineteen names it shows being claimed by more than one variety.
Traditional record Evidence standard for this record. What that means.