You cider bashers can **** off. Sometimes it's just a cider kind of night. If it was a beer kind of night, I'd have been drinking beer.

Dixon Cider?

I've actually just started enjoy cold draughts in the last few months. Funny how at 28 my hatred of beer turned into an enjoyment. No longer drink just to have alcohol in me, I can actually just sit and enjoy a very cold Blue Moon or two and be good.

But cider is delicious. If Martinellis had alcohol in it I would be drunk alot more.

lol, dude you are in a british pub in majorca, not ****ing epcot. it is not there to satisfy some american ideology of what a 'ye olde british pub' is. it's there to attract topless english lager louts by providing them with the exact same environment as in england, except with better weather.

Yeti - how many non-tourist oriented pubs in England have you been to?

um, i lived in england from birth until i was 28 years old. so...a few?

American cider fans,

My friends who are really into cider all seem to love Crispin.

Yeti - how many if them only had two ciders, one of which was Magners?

ED - Crispin is fantastic.

chop,

unfortunately i didn't take the time to audit each and every establishment, but i would never be surprised to see it. fwiw there was almost certainly a point when this was the case in my local pub.

i can't find any exact numbers on this, but it's likely safe to say that strongbow and magners were the #1 and #2 best-selling ciders of the 2000s in UK pubs (as sciolist mentioned, kopparberg had a decent run towards the end of the decade). strongbow of course was a draught beer and magners was typically served in a bottle, usually with a glass of ice. it's commonly accepted that it was this ice gimmick that led to its blowup and there was a summer (04/05 ish) where a huge sample of staunch lager drinkers i knew were almost exclusively drinking magners. i remember being stunned at how popular it was and it led to strongbow bringing out a copycat product.

anyway, as i have mentioned, your standard mediterranean british pub is catering to the lowest common denominator, so serving the two biggest ciders seems totally like a totally reasonable strategy, especially when magners is very much seen as a warm weather cider.

Yeti - I've only been to a half dozen Brit pubs in the Med, but all of them (until I tried this one) carried at least 3-4 ciders, usually a Thatcher's and either a Blackthorne or something else. Guess I've just been running good.

As for England, I'd guess I've been to around 30-35 pubs and I don't remember any of them having less than 3-4 ciders, often more. Maybe my data was biased given most of the pubs were around Somerset.

Regardless, I am still confirmed mad about having to drink Strongbow instead of Thatcher's or Sheppy's or something decent.

So I go to a drive through starbucks every morning and occasionally get hit with that ******ed "pay it forward" scam that has been talked about here.

This morning, the barrista tells me the person ahead of me paid for my drink which was like 2.50. Before she could even get the sentence out of her mouth "Would you - " I just said "Oh, how kind!" and drove away.

Victory!

Somehow yesterday I got the idea it was Monday and I thought today was Tuesday until a few minutes ago. And no excuse. Not hiking in the wilderness. Plenty of cues. Kids at school. Regular work schedule.

I went to a BoA ATM yesterday and the screen after I logged in threw up an image saying "600 people born everyday have HIV."

Reminded me of the "Race together" Starbucks campaign.

Why do these companies need to act like they are changing the world?