Cider

Corsendonk

I consider myself a beer drinker but I do like the odd cider. So can anyone recommend some for me to try?

ANXIOUS

Corsendonk wrote: »

I consider myself a beer drinker but I do like the odd cider. So can anyone recommend some for me to try?

Yeah I'd be interested in this, I can't drink beer or stout it makes me sick. I want to try and move away from bulmers to proper cider.

spaceoddity

ANXIOUS wrote: »

Yeah I'd be interested in this, I can't drink beer or stout it makes me sick. I want to try and move away from bulmers to proper cider.

Have you ever been tested for Coeliac disease? If bread makes you feel the same as after having a beer/stout, you might want to look into that. My sis used to drink heineken all the time, now it ruins her night out if she evens gets the tiniest bit of gluten in a meal/drink.
As for the cider, the only ones I've really tasted are Kopparberg Pear and Strawberry & Lime - too sweet for me, and I have a bit of a sweet tooth! :P

BeerNut

Proper cider can be a bit difficult to get hold of in Ireland. Double L is very good. Aspall's is quite nice too.

Corsendonk

spaceoddity wrote: »

Have you ever been tested for Coeliac disease? If bread makes you feel the same as after having a beer/stout, you might want to look into that. My sis used to drink heineken all the time, now it ruins her night out if she evens gets the tiniest bit of gluten in a meal/drink.

Ireland also has one of the worlds highest level of haemochromatosis which effects men, basically your body produces too much Iron so you can't drink stout or beer due to there high iron content and the low iron option is cider.

I have tried all the Kopperberg varieties but find them too sweet too. Aspall Cyder was fine, Tesco use to do a Finest Weston cider which was the right combination of sweet and sharp but I found the quality to be up and down. They also sold an organic Weston which wasn't too bad.

irish_goat

I really like Aspall's but it's hard to find. Comes in a really cool bottle.



Weston's Organic Cider is nice too.

Edit: Just realised you mentioned both of these. :P

Wouldn't know about too many other ciders, they're hard enough to come by in Ireland. Avoid Savanna cider though, tastes like tree.

BeerNut

Corsendonk wrote: »

so you can't drink stout or beer due to there high iron content

Stout, and beer generally, contains almost no iron.

Corsendonk

Yes but they have a normally higher iron content than cider and beer volume consumption is high. Studies have been done in parts of africa on iron overloaded caused by consumption of beer.

BeerNut

Corsendonk wrote: »

Studies have been done in parts of africa on iron overloaded caused by consumption of beer.

Got a reference? I find it very hard to believe that beer can have an effect on one's iron levels when there's about four times as much iron in a single egg as there is in a pint.

yoyo

You could try Druids Celtic Cider, its quite nice and cheap, not very "premium" but better than bulmers, koparberg & the likes, I also quite like Stonehouse Dry Cider, also quite cheap to pick up (Afaik €5.50 for 4x50cl cans), don't knock em coz their cheap

Nick

Corsendonk

BeerNut wrote: »

Got a reference? I find it very hard to believe that beer can have an effect on one's iron levels when there's about four times as much iron in a single egg as there is in a pint.

Study of iron in beer
http://bloodjournal.hematologylibrary.org/cgi/content/full/89/6/2159


Follow up research to analysis local african beer iron content, restricted to abstract
http://www.biomedexperts.com/Abstract.bme/10695182/Iron_and_alcohol_content_of_traditional_beers_in_rural_Zimbabwe

BeerNut

Cheers!

Note that the iron in the "beer" is coming from the container it's brewed in, not the ingredients. There is no relation between this sort of homebrew and commercial beer.

Iron concentration in traditional beer. The mean ± standard deviation (SD) iron concentration in the supernatants of nine samples of traditional beer from the Zaka Community was 46 ± 10 mg/L. For comparison, the iron concentration of commercially prepared beer in the United States is less than 0.2 mg/L.1

As I said: beer contains almost no iron. There is no correlation between haemochromatosis and beer drinking in Ireland.

Corsendonk

I didnt say that, I pointed out that people with Haemochromatosis can't drink it because it has a higher average iron content than cider. Hence stout been highest so doctors in the good old days advised women to drink stout if they had low iron levels. Haemochromatosis is a genetic disorder high in populations of celtic extraction particularly Ireland. So some suffers have to give blood every week to lower the there level of iron even with a controlled diet. The condition is so sensitive that suffers are advised not to even use iron utensils in the cooking process to avoid transfer of soluable iron. It over time causes the breakdown of joints with artritis so i know suffers who have had there ankles, knees and hips replaced with the disease. I know this is going way off thread now but it might help educate people to the disease.

http://www.haemochromatosis-ir.com/Q5.html

BeerNut

Corsendonk wrote: »

I pointed out that people with Haemochromatosis can't drink it because it has a higher average iron content than cider.

But negligibly so: neither cider nor beer contain clinically significant amounts of iron. On the ratio of four pints of beer = eight pints of cider = one single egg, your suggestion makes no sense. On those numbers, it matters not a jot whether people with haemochromatosis drink beer or cider(as long as they aren't drinking Zimbabwean homebrew made in iron drums which resultingly contains about 230 times as much iron as ordinary beer).

Corsendonk wrote: »

Hence stout been highest so doctors in the good old days advised women to drink stout if they had low iron levels.

An odd one that. The numbers do not suggest that stout, or cider, could have any effect on blood iron levels. Unless you have different (non-Zimbabwean-homebrew) numbers.

Corsendonk

http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/158/2/129

More reading for you, can we take this offline now and talk about cider?

BeerNut

Corsendonk wrote: »

http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/158/2/129

More reading for you

Err, thanks. Except there's nothing in that article about the iron content of beer: the author is looking at the effect of ethanol on the patients, not iron.

round tower huntsman

'devils bit' is best out there imo. good value,irish made,no artificial flavours,colours or sweetners and it blows the head of ya:D

dartbhoy

round tower huntsman wrote: »

'devils bit' is best out there imo. good value,irish made,no artificial flavours,colours or sweetners and it blows the head of ya:D

Your on the ball there! Just after a flagon of it tonight (extending into this morning!) and there's a good kick off this cider!

the beer revolu

Dunne's are selling a pretty good French Cider in 70cl bottles at the moment -Comte de Cherbourg.
Cheap too €2.35 or something like that and 5%abv.
It's is slightly sweet for my taste but not so much that I won't drink it.

uberfubar

My top 3 ciders are Aspall's (any of them), Savannah Dry Cider, and Westons The Governor Cider. All hard to find over here, especially in Waterford.

Anyone ever drink Natch in the UK? Comes in a red can? It's got a stigma not unlike Dutch Gold over here, but it's quite tasty but very dry.

It's a pity we don't have the same selection of cider as they do in the UK.

squonk

Thatchers Katy or Katy Rose is fantastic. Very hard to get over here but very nice to drink and high quality.

bamboozle

Stonewell Irish Craft cider is great...stonewell + sunshine even greater!

i see the Gleeson Group (ie Tipp Water) have 3 Irish ciders on the market Devils Bit, Pippins & Adams. i've tried none of them and never heard of the latter 2.

Tube

bamboozle wrote: »

i see the Gleeson Group (ie Tipp Water) have 3 Irish ciders on the market Devils Bit, Pippins & Adams. i've tried none of them and never heard of the latter 2.

I had Adams before it was launched. Didn't strike me as hugely different to Devils Bit. Also, I *think* I saw Adams in Tesco the other day.