Perry pear
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.
Also written Judge Amphlet, Amphlett.
- Classification
- Medium sharp — Perry pear classification
- Harvest
- Very early (Late August to early September)
- Single varietal
- Sometimes bottled on its own
- Blend role
- Early season, Acid lift
- Origin
- Worcestershire
- Species
- Pyrus communis
- Flowering
- Early flowering band
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Biennial bearing
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Poor — mill soon after picking
How it is classified
Perry pear classification
Medium sharp
Moderate acid with low to moderate tannin.
Moderate acid, low tannin. Early-ripening perry pears are almost all in this part of the scheme, and Judge Amphlett is a typical example rather than an exception.
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 | Light | |
| Sugar | Moderate | |
| Bitterness | None | |
| Astringency | Slight | |
| Aroma | Present | |
| Body | Medium |
Medium-sharp placement in the Long Ashton perry pear account.
A light, moderately sharp juice with almost no grip, made and drunk quickly rather than kept.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Judge Amphlett, 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 gravity1.053 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 acidity4.3 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 tannin90.0 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
- Third week of September to first week of October
- Growth habit
- Medium
- Bearing
- Heavy and regular
- Held as
- Listed as “Judge Amphlett”
Medium acid, low 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.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Very early
- Flowering
- Early flowering band
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Cropping
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Poor — mill soon after picking
Late August into early September, and among the earliest perry pears grown. Its value is almost entirely in that timing: it gives a mill something to press weeks before anything else is ready. The National Perry Pear Collection records it ripening in the middle or later part of September at Hartpury, one band later than the very early window recorded here.
Very poor. Warm late-August weather takes fallen fruit within two or three days.
Early flowering, with the frost exposure that implies. The National Perry Pear Collection places it in the early flowering band, from flowering records kept over many seasons.
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.
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Pear scab | moderate | — |
| Rapid breakdown in warm weather | high | Ripening in late August means the fruit falls into the warmest conditions of any perry pear harvest. |
Juice and pressing
- Moderate acid, minimal tannin
- Ferments fast
- Little capacity to age
How it is used
- Pressed at the very start of the season, before the main perry pear crop.
- Blended with later fruit where a maker holds the juice rather than fermenting it separately.
On its own
Sometimes bottled on its own
Made alone occasionally, giving a light perry for early drinking. There is little in the juice to build on.
About Judge Amphlett
Judge Amphlett is one of the few perry pears whose name can be attached to a person and therefore to a period. It commemorates a Worcestershire judge of the Amphlett family, which places the naming in the nineteenth century — later than Barland or Taynton Squash, and late enough that it belongs to the era when perry pears were being selected and named deliberately rather than simply noticed.
Its distinguishing feature is timing. The fruit ripens in late August and early September, weeks ahead of the main perry pear crop, and that is the reason it was planted. A farm with a Judge Amphlett could start milling before anything else was ready. The corresponding problem is that fruit falling in late August falls into the warmest weather of the harvest and rots within two or three days, so the tree has to be watched and cleared quickly.
The juice is moderately sharp with almost no tannin, which is typical of early perry pears and limits what can be made from it: a light perry, drunk young, with nothing to build on. It is a useful cultivar rather than a distinguished one, and it is honest to describe it that way.
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
Named for a Worcestershire judge of the Amphlett family. The commemoration is documented in tradition and in nursery use; the raising of the tree itself is not.
Why it matters
- One of a small number of perry pears named after an identifiable individual rather than a place, which makes its naming datable in a way most perry pear names are not.
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.
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.
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.
- When are cider apples harvested — In the northern hemisphere the cider harvest runs from about September to November, with late bittersweets such as Dabinett and Vilberie coming in last. Cider fruit is generally picked riper than dessert fruit, and often gathered from the ground.
- How long can apple juice sit before i ferment it — Only hours at room temperature before wild fermentation begins. Chilled and sulphited it can be held for a day or two; beyond that it needs freezing, pasteurising or fermenting.
- 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
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 Pears
L. C. Luckwill and A. Pollard (eds), published for the National Fruit and Cider Institute by the University of Bristol, 1963 · reference work · bibliographic record verified, not opened 2026-08-25 · covers 1963
Bibliographic record verified on 2026-08-25 against Open Library, which records the work as Luckwill, 1963, published for the National Fruit and Cider Institute by the University of Bristol. The catalogue entry names Luckwill alone where the standard citation names Luckwill and Pollard as joint editors; CiderHQ keeps both names and records the discrepancy rather than silently following one catalogue. This is the foundational descriptive work on English perry pears and the ancestor of most later variety lists. No copy was opened: it is sixty years old, out of print, and held in research libraries rather than in open digital collections.
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.
Three Counties Cider and Perry Association
TCCPA · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24
Traditional record Evidence standard for this record. What that means.