It’s the only flavor that doesn’t get too sticky sweet in the back of your throat. You’d think it’d be grossly sugary, but the taste remains light and matches perfectly with the fizz of the seltzer. In a variety pack with four flavors including lime, raspberry and grapefruit, the black cherry stands out above the rest. With only 5 percent ABV in a 12-ounce can, you can afford to do that. If we weren’t in a pandemic, I’d prefer to down four of these in two hours at an IFC tailgate.

There’s nothing like sipping one of these poolside.

White Claw Hard Seltzer Julia Nikhinson/The Diamondback Watermelon & Kiwi? Adult Capri Sun vibes. Pineapple? Poolside at a Caribbean resort. Not to mention, Truly’s tropical mix pack is unmatched. With three variety mix packs - berry, citrus and tropical - and one rosé, Truly also has a larger selection of flavors than White Claw, so there’s more opportunity to spice up your darty. As someone who really hates seltzer (don’t ask me why I keep drinking hard seltzer, I have no answer), I welcome the focus on the fruit flavor over the carbonic acid. While neither brand tastes like alcohol (like, at all), Truly tastes a lot less like seltzer. It’s not true, but I can pretend!Īnd, actually, I think they taste better. I feel like I can walk up to the cashier without the fear of exposing myself as a frat-going, lightweight college girl. The two brands are almost identical - 5 percent alcohol by volume, 12 ounces, 100 calories, 2 grams of carbs - except I don’t feel embarrassed to buy Truly. So without further adieu, here is our ultimate hard seltzer power ranking, featuring the best (and.not best) hard seltzers you can drink.Truly Hard Seltzer is like White Claw’s underrated, hipster sibling. We decided to rank the best hard seltzers using three criteria: Crushability (how easy it is to drink?), Craveability (how much did I find myself wanting another days later?), and Creativity (was there something surprising and delightful?). And while experts say hard seltzer’s appeals to wellness are dubious at best, they’re still a lighter alternative to many cocktails and beers. Of course, I taste-tested many of my favorites on this list more than once, and when you factor in the mild buzz prompted by such painstaking reporting, which prompted several 30-second walks to the kitchen to make popcorn and 10-minute diversions to find a specific version of “Satellite” by Dave Matthews Band on Spotify, we come to an official clinical total of 10 hours spent drinking (and thinking) about hard seltzer.Īll of the hard seltzers on this list fall somewhere between 80 and 150 calories, are gluten-free or gluten-reduced, and most contain little to no sugar. If we set aside 5 minutes for each of the 75 individual hard seltzer variations I imbibed, that would bring us to roughly 6 hours and 15 minutes of taste-testing. Not all hard seltzers are created equal, which is why I pursued this undertaking with a monk-like fervency.

Inspired by Shakespeare, who is said to have written King Lear when he was under quarantine in the early 17th century, I decided to tackle my own personal King Lear: trying as many hard seltzers as I could in hopes of compiling a definitive power ranking. Then again, you need to feel comfortable with a little bit of foolishness to get on the hard seltzer journalism beat in the first place. Setting out to try every hard seltzer on the market is a fool’s errand. As more customers turn away from beer’s bloat, wine’s higher barrier to entry, and liquor’s propensity to deliver a punishing morning-after, they’re finding a lower-calorie beverage for the most part lacking in pretension and focusing on drinkability. The explosion of brands demonstrates hard seltzer’s staying power, with new players getting into to capitalize on a wide variety of market segments. In that same year, White Claw and Truly emerged on the scene, dominating the marketplace, but also opening the door for the proliferation of dozens upon dozens of competitors, from heavyweights like Bud Light Seltzer and Corona Hard Seltzer, to more craft-oriented brewers like Wild Basin and DC Brau, to hard seltzer brands targeting health-conscious consumers like Vizzy and Maha. Anheuser-Busch noticed the beverage’s popularity and acquired SpikedSeltzer, rebranding it as Bon & Viv in 2016. The current hard seltzer boom traces its origins back to 2013 when Nick Shields, a manager for a small beer brand, and his business partner, Dave Holmes, created SpikedSeltzer. And while we’ve been slugging the fizzy stuff for centuries, only within the last decade did human beings come up with the bright idea to brew carbonated water infused with alcohol. It’s been over 250 years since the English chemist Joseph Priestley invented seltzer after discovering a method he referred to as “impregnating water with air” (sounds kinda kinky, but go off, Joseph).

Corona seltzer alcohol type