Perry pear
Hellen’s Early
An early Herefordshire perry pear of very large tree and moderate juice, printed by one compilation as a Sweet Huffcap and by another collection under a different name entirely.
Also written Hellens Early, Hellen’s Early Pear.
- Classification
- Medium sharp — Perry pear classification
- Harvest
- Early (September)
- Single varietal
- Rarely bottled on its own
- Blend role
- Early season, Acid lift
- Origin
- Hellens, Much Marcle, Herefordshire
- Species
- Pyrus communis
- Flowering
- Late flowering band
- Vigour
- Very vigorous — a large tree that takes years to settle to cropping
- Biennial bearing
- Regular cropping
- Keeping
- Poor — mill soon after picking
How it is classified
Perry pear classification
Medium sharp
Moderate acid with low to moderate tannin.
Long Ashton recorded 5.5 g/L acid and 1.8 g/L tannin — moderate on both, sitting between the sweet and the sharp ends 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 | Moderate | |
| Tannin | Moderate | |
| Sugar | Low | |
| Bitterness | Slight | |
| Astringency | Noticeable | |
| Aroma | Present | |
| Body | Medium |
Long Ashton’s figures: SG 1.045, 5.5 g/L acid, 1.8 g/L tannin.
A moderately acidic juice of low gravity, useful early in the season when nothing else is ready.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Hellen’s Early, 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.
Specific gravity1.045 SG
Long Ashton Research Station, near Bristol, North Somerset, England, 1903–1963 · Juice density. Published by the source in the four-figure form (1058) and written here in full. · National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology
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.
Juice density, the practical proxy for sugar before fermentation. Measured in specific gravity.
Titratable acidity5.5 g/L
Long Ashton Research Station, near Bristol, North Somerset, England, 1903–1963 · 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. · National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology
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.
Acid measured by neutralisation — the quantity of acid, not its strength. Measured in grams per litre.
Total tannin180.0 mg/L
Long Ashton Research Station, near Bristol, North Somerset, England, 1903–1963 · 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. · National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology
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.
The phenolic fraction responsible for bitterness and astringency. Measured in milligrams per litre.
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
- Second to third week of September
- Growth habit
- Very large
- Bearing
- Heavy
- Held as
- Listed as “Hellen’s Early”
Medium acid, medium to low tannin, 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.
Printed as “Hellen’s Early [Sweet Huffcap]”. The Huffcap name attaches to several distinct pears of the same tall, tapering shape, and the bracket should be read as “also called” rather than as an identification.
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.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Early
- Flowering
- Late flowering band
- Vigour
- Very vigorous — a large tree that takes years to settle to cropping
- Cropping
- Regular cropping
- Keeping
- Poor — mill soon after picking
Second to third week of September at Long Ashton — among the earliest perry pears, and one of the varieties that let a mill start work before the main crop.
Recorded by Long Ashton as a very large tree cropping heavily.
An early pear with a very short window. Long Ashton’s early varieties are the ones that have to be milled almost as they are picked.
Placed in the late flowering band by the National Perry Pear Collection, which is a common pattern in perry pears: late blossom and early fruit.
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.
Juice and pressing
- Moderate acid
- Low to moderate tannin
- Low gravity — the lowest of the twenty Long Ashton measured
How it is used
- Pressed early, before the main perry crop is ready.
- Long Ashton assessed the quality as average.
On its own
Rarely bottled on its own
A low-gravity juice of average quality. Its value is timing rather than character.
About Hellen’s Early
Hellen’s Early is an early Herefordshire perry pear, named after the manor at Much Marcle, and it earns its place in the record chiefly by ripening in the second and third weeks of September when almost nothing else does. Long Ashton measured it at 1.045 specific gravity — the lowest of the twenty perry pears in its table — with 5.5 grams per litre of acid and 1.8 of tannin. That is a moderate juice from a light one, and the station called its quality average.
The interesting thing about it is its name, or rather its names. The Long Ashton compilation prints it as “Hellen’s Early [Sweet Huffcap]”, and Huffcap is a name shared by several unrelated perry pears of the same tall, tapering shape — Hendre Huffcap and Yellow Huffcap both have records of their own here. Meanwhile the National Perry Pear Collection’s register carries a Hellens’ Green, and its own tables use Hellens Early in one place and Hellens Green in another. CiderHQ holds one record, notes both problems, and resolves neither, because nothing it has seen resolves them.
A very large tree cropping heavily is a useful thing on a farm that wants perry in October rather than in December. It is not a vintage pear and was never described as one, and its record here is mostly a record of the early end of the perry season, which the modern craft revival — built on the late vintage varieties — has largely stopped using.
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
The name points at Hellens, the manor house at Much Marcle in east Herefordshire, which sits in the middle of the perry country. Whether the tree was found there is not recorded.
| Name | Kind | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Sweet Huffcap | Disputed identity | The Long Ashton compilation prints this variety as “Hellen’s Early [Sweet Huffcap]”. The Huffcap name attaches to several distinct tall, tapering perry pears — Hendre Huffcap and Yellow Huffcap both have their own records here — so the bracket should be read as “also called” rather than as an identification. |
| Hellens Green | Disputed identity | The National Perry Pear Collection’s register carries a variety called Hellens’ Green, and its ripening table lists Hellens Green where its flowering table lists Hellens Early. Whether these are one pear, two pears, or one pear recorded twice is not resolved by anything CiderHQ has seen. |
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
- Its gravity of 1.045 is the lowest in the Long Ashton perry table, which is a useful reminder that early fruit has had less time to accumulate sugar.
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.
Hendre Huffcap
The most highly regarded of the Huffcap group of perry pears, taking its first name from a Monmouthshire farm and its second from a word for a drink strong enough to lift a hat.
Moorcroft
An early Malvern-country perry pear, known as Malvern Hills as often as by its own name, and at the centre of one of the sharpest identity disputes in perry.
Thorn
One of the oldest named English perry pears, recorded in the seventeenth century and still valued for a quick, light perry that is ready before most others.
Felix
A Three Counties perry pear with the second-highest assimilable nitrogen measured in the modern survey, and a low gravity to go with it.
Judge Amphlett
A very early Worcestershire perry pear named after a nineteenth-century judge, and one of the few perry pears whose naming can be tied to a documented person.
Yellow Huffcap
A second member of the Huffcap group, distinguished from Hendre Huffcap by fruit colour and shape in the collections and routinely confused with it in the field.
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.
- How long can apples be kept before pressing
- What is juice blending
- 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.
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.