Review | Summertime with Briska Cider

Please excuse the slightly misleading title.. it hasn’t really been summertime as of yet, has it? However, those fleeting glimpses of sunshine have left me pining for a favourite summer past time of mine and the lovely people from Briska were more than happy to indulge me by sending me a couple of their new fruit ciders to try out.

I finally got round to trying these on my week off about a fortnight back – I try not to drink when I have work the next day – and really felt that they would have a lot to live up to, competing with other big name brands who are currently dominating the market. Briska is the only Swedish Craft Cider on sale in the UK and the handy 50cl bottle sizes will be turning up in selected stores later on this year.

The two flavours I was sent to try were pomegranate and pear. Neither are my favourite fruits, I must admit, but I was looking forward to trying the pear especially to see how it matched up to others that are currently available. I drunk these whilst at a friends party and must admit I was pleasantly surprised by the pear – it definitely has a lot more flavour than other pear ciders available on the market right now and I am wondering if the fact it is a Swedish Craft Cider made any difference to this. I asked a few of my friends to give it a taste too and they all agreed it was really nice.

Unfortunately, I did not fare too well with the pomegranate, although I think that is more my own fault rather than the cider’s. I am not a great lover of pomegranate, only having it very occasionally, but I am always willing to give it another go. Luckily though, Steve was waiting in the wings to sneak the bottle off me – he isn’t a big cider drinker but had his eye on the pomegranate cider as soon as it came through the door! He absolutely loved it and has asked to add this to the shopping list when the bottles finally hit the shelves.

These drinks were lovely and refreshing – and the pear definitely has one up on the rest of the market, something was just better about it – more flavour, crisper. The flavour of the pomegranate cider wasn’t to my taste but Steve certainly enjoyed it, so it is definitely worth trying. I’m not too sure whether the fact Briska are the only Swedish Craft Cider makers actually makes much difference and whether people will buy into these just because of that, however I do know that these will certainly be added to my basket every now and again in the future.

Do you like fruit cider?

PR Sample