Sparkling apple juice perfect for summer

Whether it’s a crisp cider, a slice of pie or a ripe red beauty munched straight out-of-hand, I like them apples just fine.

Heck, I’m not above sipping on a juice box from time to time — although most commercial apple juices seldom give me the full-flavor experience I can find in a sweet Fuji, a bracingly tart Granny Smith or a perfectly balanced Braeburn. Usually, packaged apple juices just taste like slightly tangy sugar to my palate. A recent discovery, however, has turned me back onto apple juice.

Cawston Press, a small Pittsburgh-based beverage maker, cans a line of drinks that blend freshly pressed juices with sparkling water for a fizzy and refreshing sipper that’s akin to soda, but without added sugar.

I’ve been enthusiastically downing their Cloudy Apple variety for the past couple weeks.

This isn’t your usual apple juice. For starters, it’s hazy with apple pulp. If you don’t give the can a swirl towards the end, you’ll wind up swigging little lumps of pulp some might find off-putting.

But the flavor is terrific. It’s squeezed from three apples I’m rather fond of: Jonagold, Gala and Braeburn. Once mixed with sparkling water, the taste is much closer to a complex apple cider minus the booze — perfect for a hot and lazy summer day when it’s too early to start drinking but a soda would be too sweet.

That doesn’t mean these cans don’t have a place behind the bar. I spiked one with a splash of bourbon for results that’ll beat one of those newfangled alcoholic seltzers any day.

Look for Cawston Press Cloudy Apple “sparkling apple juice beverage” priced at $5.41 for a package of four cans at Central Market. More at cawstonpress.com.

Cawston Press Cloudy Apple sparkling water is available at Central Market.