Alpen Granola Review - Raisins, Almonds and Granola

I've said it many times before but breakfast is my favourite meal. I just love granola, porridge and mueslis and eat them morning, noon and night. Nowadays I tend to go for more premium brands that are less processed and with less sugar like Rude Health, Dorset Cereals and Lizi's. However, I've always been a big fan of Alpen and regularly buy the no added sugar one so was interested into their first move into granola.

There is also a Multiseed and a multifruit version but I went for raisins, almonds and hazelnuts as I love nuts and these are typical ingredients you get in the standard Alpen. The packaging looks really nice and is fitting with the brand although I doubt you would get the recommended 10 servings out of this 450g bag. It's probably not the best value granola at £2.99 per quite small bag. Especially considering the ingredients list isn't that generous. Whereas Dorset Cereals are extremely generous with nuts and seeds, this has a mere 3% flaked almonds and 1.3% whole hazelnuts with just over 2% of sunflower seeds and 2% linseeds.

Sugar wise, it is a reasonable for a mainstream granola at 19g per 100g - certainly better than the likes of Kelloggs and some of this will come from the raisins but you can quite easily get granolas nowadays with 10g or less, which is what I prefer.

Bearing in the mind the recommended 10 servings, I had quite a meagre bowl but it looks pretty good with great big, crunchy clusters. And fair play there are a lot of raisins here. It also has a nice faint, sweetish scent from the honey in it. The clusters have a good mix of cereals in with oats, wheats and seeds and this translates into a nice mix of textures.

They are pretty tasty to eat. I had mine with some unsweetened almond milk and it was nice and nutty with a faint sweetness. It's sweet enough but definitely not overly sweet like some of the sugary granolas in the market. The pieces have a nice crunch too them but they're also very easy to eat and not to hard. Raisins add extra bursts of sweetness and juiciness and are not dry or chewy and don't stick in your teeth.

Overall, I quite liked this granola. For a mainstream brand it's healthier than other offerings although I would like the sugar reduced a little bit. It also needs to be better value as it's a small bag and they need to be more generous with the nuts and seeds. One to buy occasionally on offer but not good enough for me to be loyal to.

Price: £2.99
Bought at: Tesco (£2 promo offer)
Nutrition per 45g bowl: 198 calories, 6.8g fat, 0.7g sat fat, 8.6g sugars, 0g salt

Score: 7/10