Apple is a refreshing fruit and a staple flavour of the drinks world. Refreshing and admired in drinks from the purest of pure juices through to the fizziest of Tango Apple flavours, only the evil forces of Cider, a truly disgusting beverage sour and sully the apple’s reputation.
Fizzy apple drinks of the non-alcoholic variety generally acquit themselves well. The king of apple drinks, Appletiser lays waste to all in its way, the most premium of pub soft-drinks brand, guaranteed to taste like rain from heaven on a boiling hot day in a part-shaded pub garden. Glistening off the shelf in Sainsbury’s, tempting those of stout wallet with offers of 3 for the price of 2.
Moving down to the pot noodle level, Tango Apple has always been a favourite since it first began refreshing school kids in the North West London area circa 1992. Deadly sweet, but with enough animal fizziness to triumph over lesser concoctions like Oasis every single day. Even Lucozade Apple, though artificial enough to build a block of pre-fabricated flats and containing enough sugar to build a sculpture gets some respect for having the determination to be quite so toxic.
So, I had pretty high hopes for SodaStream Apple syrup and was duly impressed with the apple fizz and frenzied bubbling when I combined a highly fizzed water with the allotted measurement of syrup. A great scent of apple orchards were those orchards to have been hermetically sealed in a sweet factory.
On tasting though this drink gets 80 percent of the way there, but it’s no champion. The apple taste though not unpleasant simply isn’t any where near as nice as Apple Tango. I wasn’t expecting Appletiser, no, not by any means, but comparing like for like I’d have liked to see a good fight with Tango….. and it’s not there.
The good: Fizz factor is high, apple taste is pleasant. If you like sweets you will delight in how sweet this is.
The bad: The flavour is too synthetic even for someone who likes eating jelly. The sugar quotient is too much and after 2 glasses I feel both hyper and jaded.
So overall, not a terrible flavour by any means, but far from the dizzy heights that an apple drink can attain. Back to the drawing board soda scientists, I expect better.
If you want to try apple flavour, you can get it here.
