Ever since I started drinking cider I have been on the look out for new (or at least new to me) varieties to try and see if I like them. Sometimes I find ones I really like, other times not so much; it’s always a gamble. I keep trying to see if I can find one I can label as my favourite, but I am too indecisive to say anything like that, so instead I have a group that I like Quite A Bit.
This means that Ben and I have a tendency to just stop in at bottle shops when on the way somewhere to check out what they have and sometimes buy cider when we didn’t mean to. This happened on Thursday when we were walking back to the station after Trivia. We stopped in and discovered they had Apple Thief cider; they even had the various types that Apple Thief make, which was a surprise seeing as we thought they only made the one kind. We grabbed a 4-pack of the Pink Lady and Granny Smith varieties (leaving the pear because we both prefer apple ciders to pear) and decided we’d try them out to celebrate the weekend. I figured I’d write a bit about them for you all.
Apple Thief is an Australian Company from Southern NSW, down near Tumut. It’s right near Batlow and its apple orchards, so it makes sense that the cider uses Batlow apples, and apparently no concentrates. There seems to be more Australian companies trying their hands at ciders, which I find nice because then I get to support local companies and also get drunk! It’s a lovely two-for-one right there. The branding is cute and original to my untrained eyes, although I probably would have chosen a different font. The labels are matte and I almost expected them to have raised parts like a letterpress print, which is another thing that puts them apart from the majority of ciders around.
Pink Lady:
I have seen this once or twice when out and about, so I had actually tried this one before. I just figured I should try it when I hadn’t already been drinking for a while, so I could properly appreciate it. Every time I drink it I like it, and this time was no exception. I am always surprised how much it tastes like Pink Lady apples, as if I had just imagined it last time because of the name, but it really does taste like them. It’s probably the perfect amount of sweetness; it’s not cloying or overpoweringly sweet like Rekorderlig is, for which I am very grateful. I don’t have anything against Rekorderlig, I just need it to be super cold for me to drink it and then that hurts my teeth.
It is quite a light cider, with very little of the fermenty taste that some of the other ciders I’ve tried have. It’s very smooth and easy to drink, not too bubbly but also not flat, and that coupled with the sweetness makes me feel like it would be perfect for me to drink in a park over summer. It got a little less sweet the more I drank it, but it still had a very appley flavour, rather than getting beery over time. This is definitely a cider that is up high on my list of preferences, and will be drinking it whenever I have the chance.
Granny Smith:
This one was definitely tangier than the Pink Lady cider, which is really unsurprising seeing it’s made from sour apples rather than sweet ones. There seems to be a trend at the moment of more sour ciders, so I’m getting used to the tanginess of these kind of things, but sometimes it still catches me by surprise. The label on the bottle says it has a ‘medium dry’ finish, which compared to Pink Lady’s ‘medium to sweet’ finish is a pretty big contrast. I tried it again the next day and it didn’t seem as sour as it had before, so maybe part of the contrast was because I’d had the sweeter cider a little while before.
It is still quite a smooth cider, compared to some of the other more sour ciders I’ve tried. The flavour tends to build up over the course of the bottle, but because of the lightness of the drink in general it didn’t seem to become too much for me and I was still able to finish the bottle easily. I did seem to keep getting an aftertaste of passionfruit while drinking the cider, which I found strange. I wonder if there really was passionfruit in there, or if my wires have gotten crossed somewhere and this is the weird result.
Because of the sourness I probably wouldn’t want to drink a lot of this over the course of an afternoon or evening. I have done that with another popular sour cider and after a few it feels like something is coating the inside of my mouth and it generally feels fuzzier than other ciders. I can tell that would happen with this one as well.
So all in all these ciders were both quite nice to drink, especially compared to some other, drier, ciders I’ve had in the past. I’m looking forward to the warmer weather so it will be prime cider-drinking time. I want to sit in a park in the sun while wearing a dress and drink nice cold cider and forget all my worries.