Cider is my preferred weak alcoholic beverage - I don’t like beer. Now I find I have good reason to like it.
Weak alcoholic beverage? What makes it weak? Just not “hard” liquor?
Cider generally has more ABV% than beer.
I’m glad to hear this. I don’t like apples, but I love hard cider.
I’ve always liked cider too.
Until a visit to Somerset in England a few years back, when the opportunity to sample genuine Scrumpy came about. We called in to the orchard with the hand-painted signs and bought a cuppla bottles of the straight stuff.
Suffice to say, I’ve never drunk cider since. It was ABONIMABLE. It tasted like vinegar with ethanol added. I’ve never been one to leave anything undrunk, but that bottle had one glass taken and the rest was dunked down the sink.
Much like the pastie I got in Cornwall too. What a fucken disappointment!
Pasties are much better in Michigan than in Cornwall. Or I should say, Americans like them better, probably because they use meats and spices that are more familiar to our tastes.
I love cider too. I was surprised to find out that in Ireland it’s considered quite a heavy hittin’ drink (both the kind that hits hard and often leads it’s consumers to hit hard - starting pub brawls.) The men there were floored that this American woman would throw back a few ciders when they were drinking beer and whiskey.
Makes me think that peoples reaction to alcohol is highly culturally determined. I’ve always considered cider on par with a wine cooler in its effects (although the alcohol percentage is higher), and wouldn’t dream of anyone getting violent on it, nor does it cause extreme drunkenness or any sort of hangover in me or my American cider drinking friends at all.
I used to make my own cider. One day after the husband got done mowing the lawn, he decided that having a cider would be the thing to do. He passed out on the couch for a couple of hours afterward.
There’s definitely a big difference between the commercially-made stuff and homemade. Perhaps that’s where the folks you were drinking with got their beliefs about cider from. Homemade cider hangovers are eeevil …
I’m a big fan of hard cider, but it’s kind of hard to find in most bars. I rarely enjoy beer.
I can’t drink much cider, but it’s not because it’s particularly strong- it’s because cider is just so damn sweet. My stomach starts to hurt after drinking it, and I always wake up with headaches in the morning.
The story doesn’t specify whether they were studying alcoholic or nonalcoholic cider.
I don’t think the BBC would call anything but alcoholic cider, cider.
In the U.K., cider is alcoholic. Typically 4% ABV, plus or minus. There are high-alcohol ciders - 8% and more - but I really don’t like them, since they usually taste like they’ve been brewed normally and had extra alcohol tipped in.
Over here (and I assume in other cider-poducing countries), cider comes in “sweet” and “hard” (“doux” and “brut” ) form ( the former is significantly sweeter, but both are alcooholic beverages and I don’t think it contains less alcoohol… I’m not sure what is the difference in the prduction process). Maybe you should try hard cider.
Count me amongst the cider lovers and beer haters.
I make my own, and now I know that I have a medical reason for doing so. (“Honest, dear…it’s for my health!”) 
In America, it’s cider (apple juice, basically) and hard cider (the alcoholic stuff).
Canadian hard cider is 7% but the Strongbow we get from the UK is 5.3%-similar to the beer here. Oddly, cider is considered a “girl’s” drink. Once, I drank a 2 litre bottle of Grower’s Grapefruit cider and had a 36 hour hangover. Wooga!
Last time I ever got abominably drunk was on some kind of rough cider whilst on holiday in Somerset; we had been to the pub for a few drinks and came back to the holiday cottage for a few more; a board game was brought out and we played a few rounds, while I ate handfuls of bombay mix, washed down with quite a few pints of cider. It was just like drinking lemonade, until I started to feel a little odd and excused myself to go to bed. A bit later, I got up to use the toilet, but everything was spinning and I embarked upon a session of vomiting and groaning that lasted for several hours; my wife found me lying almost naked on the cold tiled floor in the bathroom; it wasn’t that I couldn’t move; there just wasn’t any point moving, because I was certain I would throw up again. I spent much of the next day groaning, cluthing my head or stomach, and moving around very, very carefully. I’ve been horribly drunk many times in my life, but this was by far the worst…
She said if I did that again, she would leave me, so I haven’t done that again (actually, that isn’t the only reason; it was bloody horrible and I don’t want to go through that again)
Oh, how I miss my Grower’s hard Pear. Mmmmm! And Strongbow. Damn, it may be time to get home again already!
lots of old irish guys make their own cider. and their own vodka, which is absolute filth and generally about 60%.