I’ve created a monster, a glorious monster!

It’s a Wednesday morning, I’m at my desk in my home office and my mind is wandering. I’m wishing I was somewhere else. Don’t ask me where, I don’t know, just anywhere but here…

Lunch comes around soon enough and I’ve not done nearly as much as I should have done. I’m sat at my kitchen table with slightly a soggy tuna mayo pitta, an apple on the side and a cup of tea steaming next to me.

As I sit eating my lunch on my own (kids are at nursery and my wife is back in the office again) I turn to Twitter scrolling for some, often rage inducing, company. My Twitter habits are nothing to be proud of, venturing ever further down the rabbit hole of politics in the UK and then regretting it because it’s all miserable. Wednesday, as some of you probably know, is Prime Ministers Questions. Particularly miserable and absolutely no good for one’s wellbeing! 

Just as I’d sat down to embark on my twitter scrolling adventure I was delighted no, RELIEVED to see a midweek post from @cider_review. The return of Adam Wells! This was a lunch time read that I wasn’t going to miss! I’m a massive fan of Adam’s work and his return to Cider Review didn’t disappoint. 

Adam’s article listed a number of things that bring him joy about cider and perry. It’s a list that will resonate with many of us who work in the cider / perry world, or who have dreams of being more well known within it and flirt with it by writing shitty articles about pairing crisps and cider.

The list mentioned that no one had ever made a cider slushie. Unfortunately for Adam, he’s wrong about this; Strongbow released a draught ice cider back in the 00’s and I’m reliably informed that Weston’s had also released a whole juice version at a similar time. Seems that neither really caught on which in the case of the former is no great shame. Anyway, in the absence of being able to but a slushie in a pub I figured I’d try and make one and write up the method for you so that you can try it if you wish to. 

 There are lots of methods online that you can follow to make a slushie, some involve cups you freeze, others involve blitzing ice in a blender. This is probably the easiest and cheapest method and absolutely no expensive equipment is required. All you need are 2 ziplock bags and 2 x 500ml bottles of cider. 

I used Henney’s Dry Cider as it’s relatively cheap and widely available in several supermarkets (and minimises losses if it turned out badly).

How to do it …

1. Open one bottle of cider. 

2. Put the other bottle in the fridge.

3. Pour the contents of the open bottle into a zip lock bag and seal it. 

4. Place the cider filled bag inside the other bag and seal that too – try and squeeze as much air out of the bag as you can. The second bag is your safety net in case the inner bag pops. 

5. Stick the bags in the freezer for a few hours. I put mine in the freezer at midday and by 5pm it was pretty much ready to go.

6. Take the frozen cider out of the freezer, give the bags a squeeze. It shouldn’t be completely frozen, if it is, grab a rolling pin and give it a gentle bash (not too vigorously so as to break the bags). 

7. Take the booze filled bag out and cut a hole in one corner – this is your pouring spout.

8. Pour / squeeze the slushie from the bag into your glass of choice. 

9. Grab your second bottle of cider from the fridge and top up your glass.

10. Garnish with a sprig of mint and a couple of raspberries from the garden.

11. Sit back, take a slurp and bask in the glory that is the cider slushie.