Also featuring my hard-won Geeks Who Drink prize glass.

I picked up a bottle of Devil ‘N Cider from Cockrell Hard Ciders from a recent trip to Schilling Cider house. I’ve never seen anything from this company on shelves before, and the idea of raspberry habanero cider sounded pretty interesting. To sum things up: there is literally nothing about this cider that is subtle or mild.

Let’s start with the aroma: it’s a faceful of aggressive floral fruity raspberry. It hit me from feet away. If I concentrate, I can pick up a little of the habanero, but the fruit is more or less completely dominant. It’s also a dramatic-looking reddish-orange, very clear and very still.

The flavor is equally powerful, on the other side of the flavor see-saw: it burns. It burns in my mouth and it burns down my throat and I can even feel it burning in my stomach. I get nothing but the burn, too — if there are cider notes or even raspberry to be found in the flavor, I don’t get them.

So, clearly this cider is not my cup of tea (both literally and figuratively). That said, I look forward to trying other offerings from Cockrell. They’re a local outfit, right down in Puyallup, so at some point I hope to swing by their tasting room which just opened up in December. If you’re in the area, you can also visit, or find them at a few stores in the Seattle-Tacoma area.