Queuing for cider lollies in the 1960s
In Britain in the 1960s and 1970s the ice cream man used to carry so-called cider lollies, Lyons Maid Cider Barrel and Cider Quench among them. Buying one outside the school gate seemed a bit daring and a little grown up, as a primary school kid. They did not contain any alcohol but for whatever reason – the Trade Description Act, fashion, moral panic – they disappeared.
Whiteway’s Devonshire Cyder blotter c. 1935.
CourtesyWellcome Library, London.
At home, we could drink alcohol-free, fizzy Whiteways Cydrax or Peardrax. The acidic newspaper columnist Victor Lewis-Smith called Peardrax ‘a foul, resinous, cloying, sweet beverage’ which lacked the ‘saving grace’ of getting you drunk. Despite that, it staggered on for years in the face of falling sales. It was finally taken off the UK market in 1988 although the sibling products were made under license in Trinidad by Pepsi-cola for another two decades. The acetone flavour of Peardrax made it a favourite on the island where it was often mixed with Scotch.
Teenage angst, or is it the lager?
Meanwhile, slightly older under-age drinkers would arrive at parties in clutches, sharing bottles of Olde English or Strongbow. These were often destined for punch topped up with vodka smuggled in, in quarter-bottles. This gave factory cider a debatable reputation as training wheels for alcoholics.
Scrumpy was hard to obtain away from the deep countryside but had a shamanic aura due to its ability to induce a trance and/or vomiting. Grown-up cider remained a secret kept by grown-ups.
Novice pub-goers in the 1970s graduated to trendier drinks such as Snakebite (equal measures of cider and lager with a dash of blackcurrent cordial) before abandoning all forms of cider for dead beer and sticky vodka and lime.
Skunk cider: your doorway awaits
Cheap super-strength cider in cans emerged far later. It was the drinks equivalent of skunk and may well have been a gateway to dependence and abuse for some but the influence of alcopops is more insidious even if their alcohol content is only around that of a beer (i.e. lower than a decent cider’s).
If a cider lolly put a kid on any kind of path it was towards being and behaving like an adult. Alcopops, by contrast, appeal to young adults’ childish tastes if not childish pockets: Kopparberg Frozen Fruit Cider Sorbet costs a socking £8 a litre.
The price is wrong
Let’s assume that it will sell. If so, price clearly isn’t an obstacle to its consumption; quite the opposite: buyers tend to infer value from price and despite being in a plastic pouch like cat food or plasma, it’s touted as a premium product. April fool’s or not, they’re having a laugh.
On 1 May, 2018 Scotland introduced a minimum price on alcohol that will see a four-pack of factory cider rise in price by about 10 percent, which is intended to persuade drinkers to cut down or to cut out the booze. The Kopparberg example suggests that it won’t work but if it does it could be because there is already a trend among the young towards abstinence.
A decade ago about 19 percent of young adults were teetotal; now the figure is around 27 percent, although those that do drink are more likely to binge. I can’t help feeling that rather than bringing in super-priced sorbet someone should reintroduce the cider lolly.
Freeze your own cider, well, maybe
Back in (secondary) school days we tried freezing factory cider with the aim of creating a kind of eau de vie by taking off the ice that separated from the main liquid. It didn’t really work, not least because no-one had a big freezer and we were trying to do this in the little box at the top of the fridge. But it’s not a great idea anyway because what you’re doing is concentrating the stuff that gives you a hangover.
When it was common practice to make applejack in New England by leaving barrels of cider to freeze and thaw repeatedly, they managed to push the alcohol content up to between 25 and 40 percent but it was harder work than distilling, as well as causing ‘apple palsy’. Real adepts could produce cider oil with an ABV of around 60%. The practice more or less died out, and these day’s commercial applejack is made by adding spirit to apple brandy in order to ‘jack’ up the alcohol content. Cheating, really. But there are worse things.
The Swedish alcopop factory Kopparberg produces a fruit-flavoured cider sorbet that is frozen in a plastic pouch and drunk like a slushie. It is supposed to have been conceived as an April fools’ joke. At 4% ABV and flavoured with strawberry and lime-flavoured flavouring it is clearly not intended for the mature palate.