Little Fat Lamb Alcoholic Hard Apple… no it’s not a cider. It doesn’t use the word anywhere on the bottle. They were careful about that. The marketing department blur the lines and the retailers straight up chuck it in the cider fridge.
So lets get this clear, They want you to thinks its a cider. It’s not a cider. They call it a “brewed wine product” … um WTF Mate? At about $1 per standard drink it’s cheap, $9 for 8 drinks in 1 bottle. One possible explanation for the cheap price is that it is taxed as a wine product and not as an RTD (Ready To Drink spirit and mixer, think vodka and soda in a can). This means that the Little Fat Lamb’s parent company Drink Craft (I’ll get to that name in a moment) can sell the product cheaply because they aren’t paying fair share of tax. More Fat Cat than Fat Lamb.
The other way that Little Fat Lamb can make the drink so cheap is they use cheap ingredients. Sugar is cheap, water is cheap, what ever “Alcoholic Hard Apple” flavour is, that’s probably pretty cheap too.
When I talk about craft drinks, I am referring to small producers with interment relationships with the apple growers, they’re often the same person. These companies are so small that a late frost could spell the end of the label. Craft producers pour their heart and soul into their drinks and they will shout it from the rooftops. Drink Crafts obviously trying to pretend they are a craft company. After some digging they are anything but a craft producer.
Little Fat Lamb’s website is where I would expect to hear a bullshit craft back story like what happened with Little Green Apple Cider. However the Little Fat Lamb website was incomplete so I looked up it’s registration. I found myself asking who is “THE TRUSTEE FOR FLUID BEVERAGES TRUST” ? It seemed like a dead end so I looked up the Drink Craft domain. Sorry I’m revealing I’m also a computer geek as well as a cider geek. Drink Craft don’t have a website only a domain (the web address) which is registered to UNITED DISTILLERS PTY LTD the former name of a distiller company now owned by Diageo one of the biggest booze companies in the world. Yet drinkcraft.net.au is listed on the bottle.
What they lack in websites they make up for in Facebook posts encouraging dangerous drinking
Drink quality not quantity. I’d rather save my money for a decent pint.
The Nose
Sweet, like its going to attract ants and insulin dependents. The only fruit like smell is some medical grade tropical fruit just like your granny’s over powering perfume.
The Taste
A horribly monotonous bombardment of sugar. There is nothing that tastes like cider. There is nothing that tastes like apples, hell it doesn’t even taste alcoholic. I’m sure that’s the point of it. The only thing with an actual flavour is the clear and present notes of cough syrup. As you would expect from such a sugar heavy beverage the aftertaste hangs around like snot on a toddlers nose.
It was so sugary I pored some into a test tube, I wasn’t going to drink any more of this rubbish. I dropped in hydrometer. It revealed the sugar content was at least 97 grams per litre. Wow.
Final Thoughts on the Little Fat Lamb
I really had to think about publishing this review. That they don’t call it a cider but lean heavily into it and this website is about the real cider. Your average punter doesn’t know that this isn’t cider. It’s giving good cider a bad name. The UK has a generation of people who drank too much similar cheap “ciders” in their youth and vowed never to touch ciders again. That is a road we don’t want to go down in Australia
There is only one reason this product exists – make money off drunk kids. That doesn’t sit well with me. Don’t waste your money on this.
Product | Hard Alcoholic Apple |
Company | Little Fat Lamb |
Sweetness | extremely sweet |
Alc/Vol | 8% |
Website | http://littlefatlamb.com.au/ you wont find much there |
Country of Origin | “brewed” and bottled in Australia |
Region | um…..well is distributed from Mount Kuring-Gai |
April 16, 2018
Hard Yakka, hard apple
April 17, 2018
It’s the last thing I want drink after a hard days work
April 17, 2018
Thanks for making absolutely clear this is NOT cider.
October 28, 2018
Ok, you’ve bagged it out for not being near a cider, but, like you said, they don’t claim to be a cider.
Also, computer enthusiast. Google search of the address 50 Beaumont Rd Mt Kuring-Gai , shows that http://hawkesburybrewingco.com.au is also, brewed at the same premises ……shhhhhh
October 28, 2018
They imply that it is a Cider but my guess is the a lawyer stopped them from using the c word
November 19, 2018
I ended up here trying to find out wtf I am drinking after buying this and not find any info on the can! I was completely unaware that the “vodka cruiser” dreg-wine trade has moved to making fake ciders…. 🙁
December 28, 2018
After drinking 2 bottles, I have received a gut ache & diarrhoea.
September 18, 2019
I wish I’d read this before grabbing this one and the ginger one on a whim. Both went down the drain, would rather set fire to my own hair than drink that.
January 14, 2019
Too late.
I like very dry (proper!) ciders and often use the alcohol level as a rough guide. After all, if a drink is made from apples, the ferment uses the sugar to create the alcohol.
I wanted a long cold drink, grabbed a bottle of LFL, pored some over ice and sat down to enjoy. Puke! So sickly sweet, even chilled.
Nice to know I can’t even make a complaint to these fakesters.
August 1, 2019
All o want to know is the sugar content, I know it’s pretty syrupy , and tastes sugary good. But i want to know how really bad it is…? With our standards these days, I dont understand why it’s so hard to find out.
August 1, 2019
Going off taste and comparing it to other published data on similar “ciders” my best guess is around the 92- 105 grams of sugar per litre. But little fat lamb does not publish this data or anything really about the product.
October 18, 2019
My wife has had maybe a glass amount out of the 1.25 litre of the ginger and is screaming in pain, I don’t know what is in it, maybe that’s why the ingredients are not shown in full. YOUR PRODUCT HAS POISON MY WIFE.
October 18, 2019
It isn’t my product, it’s bloody horrible. Hope she recovers soon.
June 27, 2021
I’ve been drinking the fat lamb brewed ginger for about a year and have enjoyed it, but I just opened a can from a new box and it is absolute rubbish! Bad colour, lousy taste. The numbers on the can are B112 17:27 Best before 22/04/23.
I regret not reading this site before I started drinking the product
No more for me.
January 16, 2022
Ive never been a big fan of “ciders” but little fat lamb mixed with the right mixer (breakfast juice and vodka) great little party starter and has become my drink of the summer.. I give it two thumbs up
January 19, 2022
That sounds suitably horrid but at least you are adding some real juice to your mix because the Little Fat Lamb has never seen an apple before.
October 17, 2023
There 12 flavours. I just drink the tropical…But I did not know how much sugar. Luckily I never bought sugar for 43 years…so ( little fat lamb ) be probably making up for the sugar I no have