Cider Twenty Six

Savanna Dry Premium Cider

South African; 6% Alcohol Content.

$3.00, 6 for $18.00 (AUD); Beaufort Street Merchant (Highgate, WA)

In the process of trying many new ciders and sampling several old favorites it has become quite apparent that I like most hard apple ciders. There are clearly a few out there that I absolutely hate, but for the most part I am attempting to parse varying degrees of "good." With that said, Savanna Dry is a really nice cider. Not the best I have ever tasted, but a solid pick that is well above average. It is a true dry cider with only hints of sweetness; it is very crisp and well carbonated. Savanna Dry almost has a bit of the enjoyable sourness on which some other ciders seem to overdose. This is a good pick that I recommend; bonus points for having a unique bottle.

Rating 8.7

Update

For the record, these are my favorite ciders thusfar:

5 Seeds (9.2)
Kepplers (9.1)
Castaway (9.1)

And my least favorites:

Crumpton Oaks (5.4)
WKD (5.1)

23-25; A Quarter of the Way Home!

Mercury; Draught, Dry, and Sweet

Australian; 5.2% Alcohol Content.

$2.99 (AUD) each; LiquorLand (Mandurah, WA)

Draught- The first words out of my mouth after taking a sip were, "Oh, that's good!" The draught range is my favorite of the three, but is probably a little sweeter than I would have expected considering that Mercury produces a sweet range. With that said, Cate interjected her two cents, "I guess the fact of the matter is that ciders are just sweet." I could not agree more, the sweetness of the draught is not a drawback, but something interesting to note.
Rating 8.4

Dry- Now, I am generally a fan of the drier ciders, especially when they are very crisp. The Mercury dry was certainly crisp, but almost too crisp; there was hardly any apple taste at all, almost no taste. Very odd.
Rating 7.4

Sweet- I drank the draught first, so I was expecting the sweet line to be overpoweringly sugary, yet it had a relatively standard taste; perhaps generic might be the better word. Certainly not a bad cider, but nothing to write home about either.
Rating 8.0

Cider 22

Crumpton Oaks

English; 5% Alcohol Content.

$9.95 (AUD); Botanica Liquor Barn (Innaloo, WA)

Your eyes are not deceiving you; that is a two liter plastic bottle of hard apple cider! I was dumbstruck when I came upon this modern marvel of cidery, even had I not been compiling this list of ciders, the sheer value of Crumpton Oaks would have been enough to convince me to buy a bottle (they also had a three liter bottle, but I opted for sensibility).

With that said, one of the strongest consumer messages that my father instilled in me is, "you get what you pay for." Crumpton Oaks is five dollars a liter! For five dollars you can't even get a pint of beer in Perth, so I never should have expected much at such a bargain basement price. This is the worst non- scrumpy, non- alcopop cider I have tasted... maybe it had been sitting on the shelf in the plastic container for too long? maybe it is just not a high quality product? but the cider tasted weak; not as if it had been diluted, but rather just some of the taste extracted. There was a bit of scrumpiness or perhaps it was just that hint of vinegar taste, but no matter what the source of the unpleasantness, it was there. This was a neat experiment, but definitely not one to be replicated.

Rating 5.4

Nineteen.Twenty.Twenty-One.

Three Oaks Cider Company Alcoholic Apple Cider; Sweet, Dry & Original

Australian; 5.3% Alcohol Content.

$3.50 (AUD) each; Leederville Liquor Store (Leederville, WA)

Since there are three varieties of this cider, I decided to review them all in one big chunk (and I will do the same for other ciders like Strongbow, Mercury, and The Cidery).

Sweet- As the name suggests, this cider is sweet; both in the initial and after taste. Thankfully, it is not a sickly sweetness that is overpowering, but maybe more tailored to someone who is used to drinking soft drinks, rather than cider/ beer.
Rating 7.9

Dry- I have come to realize that most "dry" ciders will be the ones that I prefer because they are always crisp and refreshing; this one is a little different however. Most of the dry ciders I have sampled do not have a particularly strong apple taste, but Three Oaks Dry leaves the drinker with a wonderful flavor in his mouth, almost as if one has just bitten into an apple (an apple filled with carbonation and alcohol, but an apple nonetheless).
Rating 8.7

Original- Not a bad cider, but not as good as the dry variety; with that said, it is less sweet than the sweet which makes it more of a winner in my book. I really don't have too much to say about the original, but it is a good solid cider and I would buy it again if others were not available.
Rating 8.1

Eighteen!

Monarch Dry Premium Strength Cider

Australian; 7% Alcohol Content.

$1.99, 4 for $7.99 (AUD); CBD IGA Plus Liquor (Perth City, WA)

Two regal ciders in a row!

Do not let the low, low price of Monarch fool you, this is a great cider; when I first took a sip, I actually exclaimed, "that's pretty good!" I am sparse with superlatives, but Monarch really pleasantly surprised me. The only downfall is the high alcohol content which slightly alters the taste, but if not for that fact, this would certainly be rated higher. It has become increasingly difficult to define what exactly makes a cider good; describing why a cider is bad is much easier, but I think much of what makes a good cider so is just that initial reaction to its taste. Monarch is simply refreshing from the first drop to the last and it comes highly recommended from yours truly.

Rating 9.0

Cider 17

Three Kings Cider

Australian; 4.6% Alcohol Content.

$2.83, 6 for $16.99 (AUD); LiquorLand (Mandurah, WA)

Three Kings makes a hard apple cider, a beer, and a ginger/vodka drink and all three were relentlessly advertised for MONTHS before I could actually find one in stores. Needless to say, the anticipation created a swell of expectation within the cider community (I have nothing to back that up with except that I was excited about finding one of these cleverly and prominently marketed ciders). Once I finally found Three Kings Cider I was overjoyed, however, the experience of drinking the cider was sadly less thrilling than attempting to find it. The cider is certainly not bad, in fact it's pretty good; the taste is very similar to apple juice with a bit of alcohol thrown in, you might not even realize it is alcoholic at first. However, once again, I bought into slick advertisements and assumed that it would translate to a superior product. Three Kings is good, but will never be confused for a great cider.

Rating 8.2