Cider

[FunkyDenz]

Strictly speaking Brothers isn't cider, it's perry, as it is made from pears rather than apples. It just tastes nicer and is more respectable to drink than Babycham.

Burrowhill do nice ciders, their hot and spicy is a mulled cider with spices, and served warmed up, lovely on the cold Glastonbury evenings (it does get cold at night in what us Brits laughably call summer)

[jeffie]

I love Brothers, I love Brothers, I love Brothers.........

You might guess that from Profile pic tho.

I tend to spend far more time than is healthy in the Jazzworld Field

[jeffie]

Or as it's known up here.. a pint of Diesel

[LondonTom]

That, sir, would be a 'snakebite and black'.

[Katster]

THIS, is what cider is:

[cejx]

Strictly speaking Brothers isn't cider, it's perry, as it is made from pears rather than apples. It just tastes nicer and is more respectable to drink than Babycham.

mmer)

[souldancer]

I want to try this Suicider http://www.somersetmade.co.uk/oldscrump/ci...ms/wiscombe.php

just for the name really!

It's funny that website is called somersetmade.co.uk but this cider is from Devon.

I love cider, Kent is another county that produces it, being the 'garden of England' and all.

Personally I like cold and fizzy, the still cloudy stuff look's like horse wee, so it puts me off!

[FunkyDenz]

There are only a few varieties of perry pear left in the country... and its only from these that you are able to call 'pear cider' perry. Other than that... its pear cider.

http://www.cidermuseum.co.uk/

[LusciousLucy]

Hey there

NOW...come on...you must live somewhere in the Outback cos there is plenty of cider in Australia if you know where to go and look. I should know, I spent the last year and a half looking for the bloody stuff throughout half of your country myself!

Thorogoods IS the best proper decent cider in Oz. Tony is a Brit who set up in Burra in SA and got a government grant to make the cider, he has his own press bought in from France and the cider he makes is up to 13% in strength, it has to be called Table Wine to get past the legality of the strength. The sparkling scrumpy is the nearest and nicest cider we found in Oz that gets anywhere NEAR the elixirs we drink in the UK. Although Bress in Victoria also comes extremely close too!

Aussie Strongbow is NOT UK Strongbow by the way! Cascade make the Aussie stuff in 3 styles, sweet, dry and Draught(?). The sweet is foul...like drinking apple lolly water! Avoid at all costs!

All the other bottled fizzy ciders, none are true ciders either as they are all half strength at 4.5%, watered down and fizzy and tbh, nearly all taste the same in Oz, this weird, not very pleasant fizzy apple juice. Pipsqueak, despite being Little Creatures is pretty disappointing.

Cider IS beginning to take hold just slightly. Magners and Bulmers are both available and often if you are lucky, you will find Bulmers on tap. Drink it with or without ice...a true cider drinker says no to the ice at all costs!!!

Weston's (a pretty decent cider house here in the UK) do an import and if you can get hold of that, it is the dog's danglies to drink. I saw Aspall's Suffolk Cider in Glebe in a bottle shop which was brilliant.

Harcourt in Victoria is where at least 2 other pretty decent proper ciders are made...well I say proper, not the shit stuff you buy in the pubs! Henry's of Harcourt even does a pear cider! Bress, although expensive (between $20-$30 a 750ml bottle) is f**king delicious and totally worth every cent!!! It is available in quite a few high end Bottle shops if you look in the fridge! The websites usually list which bottle shops you can buy them in too.

There are a few cider houses out in WA obviously including a Bio-Dynamic cider maker!

Thorogoods and Bress both deliver!!! I highly recommend ordering a crate or two! We drove a 300km round journey from deepest Riverland in October JUST to go and visit the Thorogood's cellar door...and did it again 6 months later but this time via Brisbane!!!

During my time in Oz, British Cider was one of the only things I utterly missed desperatly ither than a decent pork sausage and Glastonbury and the other amazing music festivals we have here! I am now on a course learning Bio-Dynamic farming with the aim of getting into viticulture and cidermaking with the aim of returning to Oz to one day in the not too far future to make my own cider and spread the word and the love for the greatest drink on the planet!!!

AND TO ALL THE UK TYPES...

MIDDLE FARM, NEAR LEWES HAS IT'S ANNUAL APPLE FESTIVAL NEXT WEEKEND (October 17-18th)!!!

National Cider and Perry Centre CIDER FESTIVAL!!! WHOOPWHOOP!!! See you all there folks!

As you can see...it is a true love for me! The VERY first thing I did when Chocky arrived at my house after we both got back from Oz, was within seconds of pulling up on my driveway, we were already turned around and on our way to the National Cider Centre! Just being in the presence of the smells of all the cider from the 50 barrels was worth the yearlong wait! The girly at the counter even remembered me from my visit a year earlier!!! Thinking about that place now is making me moist!!! Only 8 more days til the Cider Festival, a moment I have been waiting 2 very VERY long years for!!!

Mmmmmm cider!

Edited October 9, 2009 by LusciousLucy

[cejx]

AND TO ALL THE UK TYPES...

MIDDLE FARM, NEAR LEWES HAS IT'S ANNUAL APPLE FESTIVAL NEXT WEEKEND (October 17-18th)!!!

National Cider and Perry Centre CIDER FESTIVAL!!! WHOOPWHOOP!!! See you all there folks!

As you can see...it is a true love for me! The VERY first thing I did when Chocky arrived at my house after we both got back from Oz, was within seconds of pulling up on my driveway, we were already turned around and on our way to the National Cider Centre! Just being in the presence of the smells of all the cider from the 50 barrels was worth the yearlong wait! The girly at the counter even remembered me from my visit a year earlier!!! Thinking about that place now is making me moist!!! Only 8 more days til the Cider Festival, a moment I have been waiting 2 very VERY long years for!!!

Mmmmmm cider!

[pie_and_a_pint]

Burrowhill do nice ciders, their hot and spicy is a mulled cider with spices, and served warmed up, lovely on the cold Glastonbury evenings (it does get cold at night in what us Brits laughably call summer)

[from the land downunder]

Hey there

NOW...come on...you must live somewhere in the Outback cos there is plenty of cider in Australia if you know where to go and look. I should know, I spent the last year and a half looking for the bloody stuff throughout half of your country myself!

Thorogoods IS the best proper decent cider in Oz. Tony is a Brit who set up in Burra in SA and got a government grant to make the cider, he has his own press bought in from France and the cider he makes is up to 13% in strength, it has to be called Table Wine to get past the legality of the strength. The sparkling scrumpy is the nearest and nicest cider we found in Oz that gets anywhere NEAR the elixirs we drink in the UK. Although Bress in Victoria also comes extremely close too!

Aussie Strongbow is NOT UK Strongbow by the way! Cascade make the Aussie stuff in 3 styles, sweet, dry and Draught(?). The sweet is foul...like drinking apple lolly water! Avoid at all costs!

All the other bottled fizzy ciders, none are true ciders either as they are all half strength at 4.5%, watered down and fizzy and tbh, nearly all taste the same in Oz, this weird, not very pleasant fizzy apple juice. Pipsqueak, despite being Little Creatures is pretty disappointing.

Cider IS beginning to take hold just slightly. Magners and Bulmers are both available and often if you are lucky, you will find Bulmers on tap. Drink it with or without ice...a true cider drinker says no to the ice at all costs!!!

Weston's (a pretty decent cider house here in the UK) do an import and if you can get hold of that, it is the dog's danglies to drink. I saw Aspall's Suffolk Cider in Glebe in a bottle shop which was brilliant.

Harcourt in Victoria is where at least 2 other pretty decent proper ciders are made...well I say proper, not the shit stuff you buy in the pubs! Henry's of Harcourt even does a pear cider! Bress, although expensive (between $20-$30 a 750ml bottle) is f**king delicious and totally worth every cent!!! It is available in quite a few high end Bottle shops if you look in the fridge! The websites usually list which bottle shops you can buy them in too.

There are a few cider houses out in WA obviously including a Bio-Dynamic cider maker!

Thorogoods and Bress both deliver!!! I highly recommend ordering a crate or two! We drove a 300km round journey from deepest Riverland in October JUST to go and visit the Thorogood's cellar door...and did it again 6 months later but this time via Brisbane!!!

During my time in Oz, British Cider was one of the only things I utterly missed desperatly ither than a decent pork sausage and Glastonbury and the other amazing music festivals we have here! I am now on a course learning Bio-Dynamic farming with the aim of getting into viticulture and cidermaking with the aim of returning to Oz to one day in the not too far future to make my own cider and spread the word and the love for the greatest drink on the planet!!!

AND TO ALL THE UK TYPES...

MIDDLE FARM, NEAR LEWES HAS IT'S ANNUAL APPLE FESTIVAL NEXT WEEKEND (October 17-18th)!!!

National Cider and Perry Centre CIDER FESTIVAL!!! WHOOPWHOOP!!! See you all there folks!

As you can see...it is a true love for me! The VERY first thing I did when Chocky arrived at my house after we both got back from Oz, was within seconds of pulling up on my driveway, we were already turned around and on our way to the National Cider Centre! Just being in the presence of the smells of all the cider from the 50 barrels was worth the yearlong wait! The girly at the counter even remembered me from my visit a year earlier!!! Thinking about that place now is making me moist!!! Only 8 more days til the Cider Festival, a moment I have been waiting 2 very VERY long years for!!!

Mmmmmm cider!

[Tenner Huey]

Epic, almost worryingly knowledgeable post there Lucy

"Drink it with or without ice...a true cider drinker says no to the ice at all costs!!!"

Replace "drinker" with "snob" and I reckon you'd be more accurate

[moremi]

Then there is the culture which goes with cider

[tilt]

Though mix into a snakebite which isn't to bad, fosters, Strongbow and blackcurrant cordial)

[Ohinever]

Cider is a drink that was completely unpopular and untrendy in Britain until about five or so years back, until some marketing genius decided to sell "Irish Cider" to us. Being complete mugs, suddenly everyone in England, anyway, "loved" cider, in the same way they drink Fosters 'cos they think you can buy it in Australia.

Prior to the great Irish marketing cider revival, it was somewhat embarrasing being a cider drinker. Even growing up near Longleat, a very short hop from Glasto, this was true. When getting a round in I would confidently order the ale, the Stella etc, then meekly, and with hushed tones, add "and a pint of dry cider please".

When I went off to college in London in the early nineties it was the same. Indeed in my whole five years at college, I only knew one other regular cider drinker, whom I am still friends with to this day, united in our experince of drink related ostracisation and denigration. I remember us being cock-a-hoop when we realised that in alcoholic terms, every pint of cider was 1.5 pints of lager. That certainly shut up some of the piss takers in the footy team, and explained why my friend and I regularly lost all the drinking games. Our pint of "gay boy" as cider was known in my college, suddenly had some macho.

And nothing really changed after that, until the marketing genius above. I swear, the English would eat shit, if it was packaged "Irish Shit", or "Aussie Turd". So in the crazy way that this world works, the English started drinking a quintessentially English drink only after the Irish started to sell it to them (in much the same way that Mr. Guinness copied London Stout after a trip to London).

I knew the game was up during the 2004 Euro Finals. I was in a bar with a group of twenty, when I offered to get the first round in. All twenty, yes all, wanted Magniers on ice. I laughed, nay chuckled, thinking they were taking the piss. "No we are serious". "WTF", retorted I, "you have taken the piss out of me for years for drinking apple juice". "No we haven't - we've ALWAYS liked cider", came the feeble memoried reply.

So it came to pass that cider is now trendy. From a supermarket choice of Bow/Olde English/Blackthorn there are probably more varieties on sale than real ales. Now I feel a bit ambivalent about this change. Its a bit like having a favourite small band, and wanting them to make it big. Then when they do, you feel a bit miffed when suddenly everyone likes them and you have to jostle for position in big arenas.

Still vindication is something I suppose.

And all these young trendy cider-cum-latelies, who will never know the taunts and humilation of cider drinkers of years afore, will never really appreciate the magical fruit juice in quite the same way....

Edited October 10, 2009 by mooro

[Paul ™]

Cider is a drink that was completely unpopular and untrendy in Britain England until about five or so years back

[Tenner Huey]

interesting post, but largely a load of bollocks certainly in my experience, at least. Cider's always been popular amongst my peers. I also struggle to believe that anyone, ANYONE drinks Fosters on the basis that "you can get it in Australia".

[Tenner Huey]

Corrected that for you, it's always been popular up here in Scotland

[Paul ™]

not half as popular as Bucky though eh?

[Josie's Cat]

Anything's popular in Scotland as long as it's alcoholic or deep fried.

"Pint of battered Strongbow please ..."

[Ohinever]

interesting post, but largely a load of bollocks certainly in my experience, at least. Cider's always been popular amongst my peers. I also struggle to believe that anyone, ANYONE drinks Fosters on the basis that "you can get it in Australia".

Edited October 10, 2009 by mooro

[Tenner Huey]

Not really, Bucky is only really popular in Glasgow/Lanarkshire areas

[smytho15]

Not really, Bucky is only really popular in Glasgow/Lanarkshire areas

[ukslim]

Cider is a drink that was completely unpopular and untrendy in Britain until about five or so years back,