Yep. Prohibition was also the reason for Americans to be so into fast cars.

Ot can't have been very strong. You need yeast really to make it formant, and I can't imagine that that was present in the drink.

I used to have a mate that would do this sort of thing, but he also used to argue that if you let cheese go mouldy it's blue cheese. So I never really used to taste his products.

Nah, US too.

Johnny Appleseed wasn't planting edible apples, he was sowing seeds for a variety that tasted absolutely terrible, but was the best for alcoholic cider. What other country has a folk hero whose mission in life was making sure the next generation never ran out of alcoholic cider?

Not quite.

As I expanded on in an post higher up, here in Portugal cider is mainly sweetened apple juice with a little bit of alcohol: basically an alchopop.

It's probably due to how the local taste in many things tends a lot toward the sweet side (even though coffee here is usually a tiny cup of expresso, it comes with 10g packets of sugar, and unsurprisingly 10% of the population has Type II diabetes) and no tradition at all of brewing cider.

I wouldn't be surprised if in other countries without a tradition of brewing cider the thing also tends towards being some kind of alcoholic apple juice.

I envy you your access to real cider. About 10 years ago we could get it in Denmark, there would be a selection of ciders, next to craft beer in most supermarkets. Now the only cider you can get is the sweet 0.5% alcohol crap that the swedes make or carbonated vodka with fruit flavor.

I can't even find a can of Strongbow anymore.

Mulled cider/wine/Glogg/hot sake are pretty much the only reason I survive the cold months.

This further reinforces Bill Bailey's assertion that the West Country is full of Hobbits.

Strongbow is basically a piss in the UK. Sorry for you, guys, that you don't have proper cider over there.

Yeah most of the popular brands you see are way too sweet. I do love me a nice dry/crisp hard ciderr though. My all time favorite is Woodchuck's Granny Smith flavor.

I've also had a pear cider which was super light and crisp. I think it was Wyders on draft.

Blackbird Cider Works in Buffalo, NY makes some good dry & semi-dry ciders. They're in grocery stores all over western New York, but not elsewhere (too small). There are others who make nice ciders elsewhere, but none of the big national chains do.

French cider is also cloudy. And it contains alcohol.

The kind that’s just heated apple juice is gross but if you throw unfiltered apple juice into a crock pot, toss in half an orange spiked with cloves, and a cinnamon stick or two it becomes delicious pretty quickly. You can always add a shot of rum if you need it to be alcoholic. The citrus really makes it. Pineapple juice is a great addition too.