The apple of my eye?

As there had been so much discussion about cider duty, I thought I would run a poll to find out how often blog readers drank cider. This has now closed, with 56 responses, broken down as follows:

Never: 9 (16%)
About once a year: 25 (45%)
About once a month: 13 (23%)
Most weeks: 6 (11%)
More than beer: 3 (5%)

I have to say very rarely drink cider in pubs, as few of the pubs I visit stock “real” cider anyway, and those that do also tend to have a choice of good beers. But I am partial to the occasional bottle at home from the likes of Weston’s, Thatcher’s, Henney’s and Sheppy’s.

It is very clear from the poll, though, that relatively few respondents drank cider at all regularly, with well over half saying they either never drank it, or only had it once a year (possibly at their local beer festival). This seems to underline the point that cider drinkers are something of a breed apart, and there is relatively little overlap between them and beer drinkers. I have seen very little about cider on the popular beer blogs, and indeed one or two have been a touch dismissive of it. A lot of beer drinkers might at various times include Guinness, premium lagers and cask ales in their “drinking repertoire”, but it’s unlikely they’ll also include cider.

While cider is officially an important campaigning priority for CAMRA, I get the impression that few members really identify with it or see it as something with which beer drinkers should be making common cause.