Westons Medium Sweet

Another variety from Westons who've been scoring pretty well on the survey so far. Now, normally I prefer my cider dry rather than sweet so I was quite interested to see how this would compare to the others.

As is the way with sweet ciders the alcohol content is also slightly lower than the dry varieties and this usually gives the taste a quite refreshing but, for my liking, rather too bland flavour.

This Westons cider does a good job and is a lot better than most with plenty of apple coming through to the taste buds - a good choice for those of you who do prefer a sweet tasting cider - but not really my ideal.

The texture is good - only a very light sparkle which means the cider doesn't suffer from tasting the same as Apple Tango. However, it's further let down by a very weak, watery colour.

Cider should be a dark, cloudy, rather suspicious looking yellowy/greeny colour if possible please!

Name: Westons Medium Sweet, (4.5%)
Label: 3/5
Looks: 2/5
Flavour: 3/5
Texture: 4/5
Total: 12/20

Here's the league table of full results so far.

Mud, tigers, and a band in need

In the absence of a new cider test I thought I'd post a random update featuring bits and pieces from the last few days. Firstly, aren't tigers simply great? My favourite three animals in the world (tigers, penguins, polar bears) are all present at Singapore Zoo and I eventually got around to adding some tiger pics from the zoo to my Flickr account.

Sadly the polar bear photos didn't come out very well thanks to the glass around the viewing area being covered in dirty rain water.


Talking of which, I spent yesterday morning taking part in the Sodbury Slog - a 9.5 mile run through the countryside surrounding Chipping Sodbury, nr Bristol. One day I promise I will train properly for these events.

Nevertheless it was thoroughly enjoyable and a bit different to my average Sunday morning. There are some photos already on the web courtesy of Pete Tiley but I imagine there will be more available soon - there were certainly plenty of people with cameras around the course.

Finally, despite the fact that Satchel Blue have received 99 votes in the Unsigned Music Awards 2006, we're still trailing some way behind a number of other bands.

So what are you waiting for, get on and vote here now.

Thatchers Katy

This is "... the most popular cider in Thatchers single varietal cider range." according to the dedicated Katy website.

Thatchers Cider have produced a clever concept of creating cider from a single variety of apples, their Cox and Spartan varieties are coming up later in this survey.

As for Katy, she's not half bad when it comes to taste, but badly let down in this scoring system by very pale, almost water-like, colour and a very fizzy texture.

However, despite an eventual low score in total, the flavour itself is full of magnificent, full, rich appley-ness and my preferred flavour so far in this survey. If your tastes are for a fizzy, refreshing cool cider on a hot summer day (seems a long way off at the moment!) then a bottle of this would be a very good choice.

Shame about the rather dull label on the bottle but all things considered I can't wait to try the other single variety options now.

Name: Thatcher's Katy, (7.4%)
Label: 2/5
Looks: 1/5
Flavour: 5/5
Texture: 2/5
Total: 10/20

Here's the league table of full results so far.