Cask @ Chelmsford Winter Beer festival. Pours deep red with an offwhite head. Aroma of sweet apples, sweet blackberries, Ribena. Flavor is sticky sweet, sweet fruity, apples, sweet berries, blackberries. Medium body, flat carbonation, sticky sweet finish. Pretty awfull. 160217

Bag-in-a-box at the Monk’s Retreat (JDW), Reading. My young daughter’s favourite drink is Asda Summer Fruits Squash. She occasionally asks me to try some in an attempt to prove that it’s better than whatever coffee/tea/beer/fruit juice/tap water I’m drinking at the time. So far her attempts have failed. The squash is flat, sweet and a little sticky. It’s an insipid pink in hue, like watered-down dental mouthwash. It tastes like a mix of fake strawberry, raspberry and blackcurrant flavourings, rather than the actual fruits themselves. It is, in short, unpleasant, and I feel vaguely ill if I’m forced to drink too much of it. The reason I bring this up is that this "cider" looks and tastes identical to the squash - albeit that it’s made up to a slightly higher concentration than we use for the squash and is thus even more sweet and sticky. There’s no hint of cider or alcohol at all; I think it’s just a rebadge of the squash. The only plus point is that it’s not (quite) as sweet and sickly as some of these so-called "fruit ciders" and is just about drinkable. It still made me feel a bit queasy though. NOTE TO ADMINS: Please set up an alias for this with Asda Summer Fruits squash !