Comfortably Numb

3 Son’s Comfortably Numb is a slightly cloudy, medium sweet, cider made from both eating apples and cider apples from around Canberra.

A sweeter cider is a bit of a turn for 3 Sons Cider who have tended to drier ciders, riffing on tradition flavour profiles. Comfortably Numb mixes eating apples and a few cider apples before fermentation. Once it has fermented to a basically sugar-free state, the cider is back sweetened with a dash of Granny Smith and Pink Lady juice, just to lift the sugar levels and give it a little tang.

The name, 3 Son’s “Comfortably Numb”, is a reference to the classic Pink Floyd track of the same name. There are little references to it on the edges of the bottle. I’m going to show my age for a second, when I first saw the name I instantly thought of the New York’s, Nu-Disco Glam rockers, the Scissor Sisters, and not the UK’s Pink Floyd who first sang the track. Oddly Pink Floyd have never played at the world’s biggest cider festival (Glastonbury) but the Scissor Sisters have.

The Nose

Green apple dancing with an overripe apple, sweet Lucerne hay drying in the sun. It is a large and loud scent. It’s very distinctive.

The Taste

3 Sons’ Comfortably Numb is a well-balanced sweet cider. It starts with waves of brown sugar then pings mint and the sharp almost underripe green apple juice, balance out the brown sugar. Nothing lingers too long and the finish is well rounded. There is a flavour in there I can’t quite pick, it’s something between apple turnover and something biscuity. The mouthfeel has plenty of fat that offset vigour’s set of bubbles

Final Thoughts on 3 Son’s Comfortably Numb

Today has been 30ºc, looking out the window and nothing is green. What should have been knee-high grass now looks like NASA’s Martian training ground. Our town is limited to 160 litres of water per day.

Suddenly the blue sky turns black. A crack of lightning strikes the ground and the thunder rattles the windows. The ting, ting, ting of raindrops on the roof quickly turn into a drum roll, the gutters fill and then slosh into the empty water tanks.

As the sun goes down, we’ve had 8mil of rain. It’s not enough to break the drought or fill any dams but tonight the dust has settled, we can relax for a brief moment. Comfortably Numb.

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