Perry pear
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.
Also written Yellow Huff Cap.
- Classification
- Medium sharp — Perry pear classification
- Harvest
- Early (September)
- Single varietal
- Sometimes bottled on its own
- Blend role
- Acid lift, Early season
- Origin
- The Herefordshire and Monmouthshire border country
- Species
- Pyrus communis
- Vigour
- Very vigorous — a large tree that takes years to settle to cropping
- 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.
Placed with the medium-sharp Huffcaps. Because the group has not been analysed cultivar by cultivar in any source CiderHQ has verified, this placement carries the group’s description rather than an analysis of this fruit.
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 | High | |
| Tannin | Light | |
| Sugar | Moderate | |
| Bitterness | None | |
| Astringency | Slight | |
| Aroma | Present | |
| Body | Medium |
Descriptive accounts of the Huffcap group rather than an analysis of this cultivar. The confidence is set accordingly. These bands were authored from description; published analyses of this fruit have since been transcribed onto the record from named trial programmes and are shown above. The bands are not derived from those figures, which is why this profile is marked as classified rather than measured.
A long yellow pear giving a moderately sharp juice with light tannin, close enough to Hendre Huffcap that few tasters separate the two blind.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Yellow Huffcap, 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 gravity1.064 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 acidity6.2 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 tannin100.0 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
- First to third week of October; rots if not shaken before ripe
- Growth habit
- Very large
- Bearing
- Heavy, biennial
- Held as
- Listed as “Yellow Huffcap”
Medium to high acidity, low tannin, fruity, full flavoured and consistently good or excellent 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
- Early
- Flowering
- Not recorded
- Vigour
- Very vigorous — a large tree that takes years to settle to cropping
- Cropping
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Poor — mill soon after picking
Mid-September onwards. Like the rest of the group it is picked up from the ground and milled at once. The National Perry Pear Collection records it ripening in the first half of October at Hartpury, one band later than the early window recorded here.
Mid-season. Self-incompatible.
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 | — |
Juice and pressing
- Moderate acidity
- Light tannin
- Ferments cleanly
How it is used
- Pressed with other Huffcaps and with early Three Counties fruit rather than kept separate.
- Held in the national collection as a distinct cultivar despite the difficulty of separating it in the field.
On its own
Sometimes bottled on its own
Made single-variety occasionally. Whether a bottle labelled Yellow Huffcap contains this cultivar rather than another Huffcap depends entirely on the accuracy of the orchard record it came from.
About Yellow Huffcap
Yellow Huffcap exists as a record in the national collection and as a doubt in the field. It is one of several long, tapering perry pears carrying the Huffcap name, distinguished from Hendre Huffcap on fruit colour and shape, and separated from it more confidently in a collection where both are grown side by side than in an orchard where only one is present.
The difficulty is not carelessness. Perry pears change colour as they ripen, the ripening window is a matter of days, and the people who named these trees were describing fruit in front of them rather than establishing a taxonomy. A yellow Huffcap and a green Huffcap may be the same tree seen a week apart. Where two names are recorded from two parishes, there is often no way now to tell whether that reflects two cultivars or two habits of speech.
What can be said is that the juice belongs with the medium-sharp perry pears: moderate acidity, light tannin, a clean ferment, and enough freshness to be useful early in the season. Anyone wanting more precision than that should be told plainly that the record does not support it, which is the more useful answer.
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
Origin unrecorded. The Huffcap names were applied by growers to fruit of a particular shape, and no individual Huffcap has a documented raising.
| Name | Kind | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Black Huffcap | Disputed identity | The National Perry Pear Collection records this name for Yellow Huffcap, and also for Rock — a variety the collection holds as distinct and has separated by DNA. |
| Brown Huffcap | Disputed identity | The National Perry Pear Collection records this name for Yellow Huffcap, and also for Rock — a variety the collection holds as distinct and has separated by DNA. |
| Chandos Huffcap | Regional name | Recorded as a synonym of Yellow Huffcap by the National Perry Pear Collection. |
| Huffcap | Disputed identity | The National Perry Pear Collection records this name for Yellow Huffcap, and also for Rock — a variety the collection holds as distinct and has separated by DNA. |
| King's Arms | Regional name | Recorded as a synonym of Yellow Huffcap by the National Perry Pear Collection. |
| Kings Arms | Regional name | Recorded as a synonym of Yellow Huffcap by the National Perry Pear Collection. |
| Uffcap | Disputed identity | The National Perry Pear Collection records this name for Yellow Huffcap, and also for Rock — a variety the collection holds as distinct and has separated by DNA. |
| Uffcup | Disputed identity | The National Perry Pear Collection records this name for Yellow Huffcap, and also for Rock — a variety the collection holds as distinct and has separated by DNA. |
| Yellow Longdon | Disputed identity | The National Perry Pear Collection records Yellow Longdon as a name for Yellow Huffcap. CiderHQ holds Yellow Longdon as a variety in its own right, so the two accounts disagree about whether this is one fruit or two. The Collection’s identifications are supported by DNA analysis of the trees it holds, which makes it the stronger source — but nothing available here settles the question, so both records stand and the equation is marked as contested rather than adopted. |
| Yellow Longland | Disputed identity | The National Perry Pear Collection records Yellow Longland as a name for Yellow Huffcap. CiderHQ holds Yellow Longdon as a variety in its own right, so the two accounts disagree about whether this is one fruit or two. The Collection’s identifications are supported by DNA analysis of the trees it holds, which makes it the stronger source — but nothing available here settles the question, so both records stand and the equation is marked as contested rather than adopted. |
| Yellow Longland(s) | Disputed identity | The National Perry Pear Collection records Yellow Longland(s) as a name for Yellow Huffcap. CiderHQ holds Yellow Longdon as a variety in its own right, so the two accounts disagree about whether this is one fruit or two. The Collection’s identifications are supported by DNA analysis of the trees it holds, which makes it the stronger source — but nothing available here settles the question, so both records stand and the equation is marked as contested rather than adopted. |
| Hendre Huffcap | Disputed identity | Treated as the same fruit in some accounts and as distinct in others. The national collection holds them separately; field identification frequently does not. |
| Green Huffcap | Disputed identity | A further Huffcap name whose relationship to this one is unresolved. Colour terms in perry pear names describe fruit that changes colour as it ripens, which is part of the problem. |
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.
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.
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.
Styles it is characteristic of
Perry
The fermented drink of pears, a tradition parallel to cider rather than derived from it, in which unfermentable sorbitol leaves a sweetness the maker never chose.
Still perry
Perry without carbonation, in which the fruit’s sorbitol sweetness and its texture carry a drink that has no bubble to lean on.
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.
- 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
- Do they shake cider apples off the tree
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.
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.
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.
Gloucestershire Orchard Trust · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24
Traditional record Evidence standard for this record. What that means.