Amply’s Hard Cider

Amply’s Hard Cider seems to be this month’s new cider brand from Pinnacle Drinks. We have seen them make the same cider taste, over and over wrapped up in different labels. Will this break the mould and be something different? Will this taste good? Well, I have 10 cans to find out.

When I was at “How To Sell Stuff School”, the first thing I learned was to try not to cut the fingers off your customers. The Amply’s Hard Cider box sliced a good chunk of skin off my middle finger as I tried to pick up the 10-pack off the shelf.

Now about that 10 pack of cans. The large font shouts out that it’s  6.9% booze. Often when you buy a multipack, they have well-designed openings that let you put the box into the fridge and the box will let you easily take one can out at a time. Amply’s Hard Cider doesn’t have a box like that. Open it up in the fridge and all the cans will roll out. But I think that is the point. This pack costs $22 for 10 cans each weighing in at 2 standard drinks. Per standard drink that’s very cheap. I think this is designed to be drunk quickly. At that price, I don’t know how they can afford real apple juice.

Why did they feel the need to call it a hard cider? Why this Americanism? All ciders are hard. Non-alcoholic ciders are sparkling apple juices in all the Not-America countries and that’s still most of them. It seems like this is targeted at people who don’t know much about apple cider and are more interested in the cost-per-standard-drink equation.

The Nose

Nope. Nothing here.

The Taste

Yeah, they didn’t use real apples, it tastes cheap and fake. Where they did spend their money is on sugar, lots and lots of sugar oh and fake apple flavour. I’ve got 9 more of these cans.

I mean it is impressive they managed to can the taste of those plastic apples they have in mid-priced hotel lobbies except sweeter.

Final Thoughts on Amply’s Hard Cider

What’s the point of this cider? What if Pinnacle Drinks spent less time dreaming up new pseudo-craft labels and maybe took a walk through an actual orchard where real apples grow, they might make a better cider. But I don’t think they care about that. This just seems like the cheapest way to make a drink that young drinkers can afford to get drunk on. I’m sick of it.

Hey Pinnacle, if you do really use apples from Aussie orchards, show me, because I’m convinced you can’t make a cider this bad at 6.9% ABV using real apples.

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