Little Green Sweet Apple Cider

Little Green Sweet Apple Cider is the latest attempt at a “cider” by Carlton & United Breweries (CUB). The people who brought you the omnishambles that is Pure Blonde Cider.  Just reading the side of the can will give you an idea about how clueless they are about what cider is and how apples work.

The label features a dinky little cartoon of a red tractor, a subtle nod to the British icon for farm-made products. The tractor is pulling a giant green apple up a hill, the problem here is the rope isn’t tight. More worryingly is the dog sitting on the bonnet of the tractor. That collie is going to get a cooked coit.

Then we get to the back of the can…”Springtime sees our orchards overflow with little green apples .” Now anybody with any knowledge about gardening or kindergarten level science knows that springtime is when the flowers come out.

Here is a quick guide to help Carlton & United Breweries understand how orchards work.

• Early Spring – Buds form on the trees
• Spring – Buds open into flowers. The flowers get pollinated by the bees and develop into apples.
• Summer – The apples grow larger and ripen
• Late Summer to early Autumn – time to pick the apples, some ripe apples will naturally fall off trees.
• Autumn (Fall) – The leaves fall off the trees as they prepare for winter.
• Winter – The trees lie dormant waiting for the temperatures to rise again to start the process all over again.

CUB couldn’t really be that dumb not to realise there are no apples ready to pick in spring. Then I realised they were right. There are apples in their orchards in our spring time. Think about it, IF this does contain apples (or concentrate) they will be imported, most likely from China in the northern hemisphere. So in the Australian Springtime, the Chinese orchards would be full of little green apples. Sneaky devils.

The Nose

What the hell is going on? It’s like cat piss on polystyrene, somehow mixed with wood glue.

The Taste

I handed this to my wife to sample.

Wife: “It tastes worse than it smells”

Me: takes a small sip  “Oh for F*** sake, that is terrible”

I thought I tasted some fake hard apple sweeties on the first sip. The second sip (I’m doing this so you don’t have to) tasted like a 14-year-old’s failed woodwork project. It’s honestly just the juice squeezed out of a plywood factory.  The unnecessarily high sweetness and industrial waste taste just won’t leave my mouth. There are bad ciders you drink to be polite, there are bad ciders you avoid, then there is this. If I were stranded on a desert island with only a can of Little Green, I rather go the full Bear Grills.
The one thing that CUB do well is list sugar content on their website. The Little Apple is quoted as 7.9grams per 100ml. But I didn’t want to take their word for it. As I wasn’t going to drink the rest I poured it into my hydrometer which gave me a matching reading.

Final Thoughts on the Little Green Sweet Apple Cider

The can has a not for pregnant women label. I would like to extend that out to “not for mammals”.  Seriously, this product (I’m not calling it a cider) must have had multiple rounds of product testing at Carlton & United Breweries and yet it hit the shelves with its nonsensical label and that taste, I don’t think they know what cider is meant to taste like. I can understand why they didn’t want to put their name on the can, I wouldn’t admit to this sh** either. Hey CUB, just hire me to teach you a little bit because what you’re calling cider simple isn’t good enough.

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