Hard seltzer is a sensation.
A revelation.
A cultural phenomenon.
And one big bubbly oddity.
How did a category that barely existed three years ago get this big? This fast? Who is drinking the stuff? Is it any good? And most important: Should it be in my (and your) refrigerator?
As a fan of both “hard” (booze) and “seltzer” (carbonated water), I figured I should be at least a piece of the target audience. Still, I was skeptical about something that has all the makings of a fad destined to go flat, a future relevance serving mostly as a punchline.
“Remember the summer of 2019, when we drank all that hard seltzer?” we’ll exclaim during, say, the summer of 2022. “Thank heavens we now have our citrus-flavored, hemp-infused boozy kombucha! This will never go away!”
Well, dozens of hard seltzers later — I’ve cracked maybe 100 cans from eight companies in recent weeks — I have answers. There are a lot of bad ones and some good ones. At their best, they’re quite satisfying. And as to their staying power — well, keep reading.
You have hard seltzer questions. I have hard seltzer answers.
Q: Hard seltzer? Really?
A: Yes. And it’s an industry-shaking sensation.
By every metric, and no matter who is calculating the data, the growth of hard seltzer has been astounding this summer. Granted, it’s growing off a relatively small base. But the numbers are still eye-opening.
During the past six months, the nation has spent $389 million on hard seltzer: an increase of 210% from the previous year, according to Nielsen scans in supermarkets and other stores. Through mid-May, industry leader White Claw Hard Seltzer’s mixed 12-packs have accounted for nearly $71 million of those sales — a 320% leap from a year ago. That surge has made White Claw a top-25 brand among beers (how flavored malt beverages are typically tracked), zooming past stalwarts such as Rolling Rock, Guinness, Pacifico, Corona Light and every single craft beer — let me say it again: every single craft beer — with the exception of Blue Moon Belgian White.
White Claw’s closest competitor, Truly Hard Seltzer, is also thriving, with sales more than tripling this year. Truly is owned by Boston Beer Co., which was founded during the 1980s on the back of the iconic Samuel Adam Boston Lager. Yet in a recent four-week period, Craft Brew News reported, Truly outsold Boston Beer’s entire beer portfolio.
“It’s huge growth — huge growth,” said Christopher Shepard, senior editor for Craft Brew News. “And the expectation is that the huge growth will continue through summer.”
Q: Who is making all this hard seltzer?
A: In what is still a Wild West of sorts, many beverage companies see opportunity in what is generally fermented sugar water that is carbonated and then flavored. Big beer. Craft beer. Spirits. Cider. And independent upstarts.
There are at least 32 brands of hard seltzer at the moment, and more announced by the week. (Last week, Connecticut’s Two Roads Brewing joined the fray.) Some have national availability. Others are found in smaller, regional footprints.
The two dominant players mentioned above — White Claw and Truly — command about 75% of the market. White Claw is owned by Mark Anthony Group, a Chicago-based flavored malt beverage company whose biggest hit to date has been Mike’s Hard Lemonade. Truly, meanwhile, has been a much-needed boon for Boston Beer in the face of its slumping beer sales.
Lagging far behind White Claw and Truly is Bon & Viv Spiked Seltzer, owned by the nation’s largest beer company, Anheuser-Busch. Every other major hard seltzer brand was innovated in-house; Anheuser-Busch bought an existing brand in 2016 (so very Anheuser-Busch!) that at the time was simply called Spiked Seltzer. During the Super Bowl, Anheuser-Busch granted hard seltzer the ultimate validation: a 30-second Bon & Viv commercial, which likely raised awareness for the entire category.
Other brands vying for attention include Henry’s Hard Sparkling Water (owned by MillerCoors), Smirnoff Seltzer (made by spirits powerhouse Diageo), Wild Basin (made by CANarchy, the craft beer company that owns Oskar Blues, Cigar City and others); and smaller craft brands such as Press and SeekOut (owned by Oregon’s 2 Towns Ciderhouse). There are many more regional brands, such as Briggs, distributed only in New England, or Ficks, sold on the West Coast.
The remarkable part? Only a handful of these brands have reached their third birthdays.
Q: Who is drinking hard seltzer? And why?
A: The “why” is easier to answer. So let’s start there.
Hard seltzer capitalizes on a several popular trends. One is seltzer itself, as anyone whose fridge regularly includes LaCroix (guilty!) or one of the knockoff brands (also guilty!) can attest. Then there’s the flavor revolution unfolding across consumer packaged goods, from cigars to coffee to yogurt. People like flavor and they like diversity, and they like both those things in their hard seltzer: Nielsen says variety packs account for 65% of hard seltzer sales.
And then there are issues of health and wellness. Fueled by the ongoing success of low-carb, low-cal Michelob Ultra Light, beer companies large and small are attempting similar beers, including St. Archer Gold, a “light craft lager” from MillerCoors; Dogfish Head’s tart, refreshing SeaQuench and new session IPA Slightly Mighty; and in the coming weeks, Goose Island and parent company Anheuser-Busch will release So-Lo, an IPA that’s 98 calories per 12-ounce serving, about half the calorie count of a typical IPA.
Hard seltzers fit seamlessly with the trend. They’re generally low in calories, sugar and carbohydrates and often gluten free. Most are between 4 and 5 percent alcohol, about the same as light beer. The industry has settled on an archetype that seems to be effectively telling the story: tall, slim 12-ounce cans with a predominantly white color scheme. Sanjiv Gajiwala, senior vice president of marketing for Mark Anthony Group, said the package is part of what has resonated with consumers for White Claw and beyond.
“Part of the experience is the can and the package,” Gajiwala said. “People like the sleek can and what it says about them and the premium experience.”
As for who is drinking hard seltzer, it’s a fascinating group, because it appears to come from all directions. Gajiwala cited Numerator Insights data that shows 53% of White Claw consumers come from the beer segments: 25% of sales are by light beer drinkers, 11% from domestic premium drinkers (such as Budweiser), 9% from craft beer drinkers and 8% from imported beer drinkers.
The rest comes from a mix of wine and spirits drinkers (25%), flavored malt beverage drinkers (9%) and cider drinkers (3%).
My own casual Twitter research turned up one guy who said he was buying hard seltzer this summer in place of premium domestics and local craft brands and another who said hard seltzer was replacing light and domestic beers among his friends when they gathered to watch sports on TV.
If the thought of dudes watching sports and pounding hard seltzers sounds unlikely, it shouldn’t; Instagram features several White Claw appreciation groups, including @clawdaddycentral, which is almost exclusively men drinking White Claw: in bars, at ballgames, at home, at the beach. The brand also inspired a viral comedy video last week about the enthusiastic nature of “guys who drink White Claw, ” which includes a tagline already approaching iconic status: “Ain’t no laws when you’re drinking Claws, baby!”
Sandy Vox, assistant sales manager for the beer category at the Jewel-Osco supermarket chain, said she has been surprised by the number of men embracing hard seltzer.
“I thought it would be more women driven, but it’s 50-50,” she said. “I’m at the marathon and there are seven guys next to me in the crowd and they’re all drinking Truly.”
That’s part of why Vox has transferred shelf space from classic domestic beer brands — and to a lesser degree craft beer and flavored malt beverages — to hard seltzer: It has broad appeal. At Jewel-Osco, Vox said, hard seltzer has likely poached a lot of sales that once went to sweet beers such as Leinenkugel Summer Shandy (which makes sense; Leinenkugel’s seasonal brands, which include Summer Shandy, are down almost 14% year to date, according to IRI market research).
Light beer is also suffering, Vox said: “The new drinker whose first beer was Miller Lite or Bud Light are grabbing seltzers.”
Light beer “has been on the decline and it’s getting even tougher,” she said. “Bud and Miller didn’t help each other with that corn syrup nonsense.”
The fevered growth has led Mark Anthony Group to call hard seltzer “the new light beer.”
I asked Gajiwala about that bold claim, and he embraced it, noting that hard seltzer checks many boxes for contemporary drinkers: variety, flavor and health consciousness.
“This might be the light beer for the next generation of consumer,” he said.
Q: Is hard seltzer really the next light beer?
A: Before answering, it’s worth noting the boldness of the claim.
When light beer took root during the late 1970s and early 1980s, it upended decades of dominance for brands such as Budweiser, Schlitz, Coors Banquet and Pabst Blue Ribbon. The nation’s top four selling beer brands — and six of the top 10 — are light beer. If you had mentioned the words “light beer” to American beer drinkers 50 years ago, they would have had no idea what you were talking about. Same for the words “hard seltzer” five years ago.
Yet, here we are. Could hard seltzer create a similar disruption?
This is usually the point in any hard seltzer conversation where one-hit wonders of years past are mentioned. Think wine coolers. Zima. Or Not Your Father’s Root Beer, an unlikely sensation in 2015 that inspired knockoff brands from Anheuser-Busch (Best Damn Root Beer, which has been quietly phased out) and MillerCoors (Henry’s Hard Soda). For a moment, hard soda was the next thing. Now it’s an afterthought.
Shepard, of Craft Brew News, wondered: Is hard seltzer the next hard soda? Or more likely to be the next light beer?
“I don’t know what five years from now looks like, but I do know seltzer has developed differently than anything I’ve been witness to during the last decade,” Shepard said. “Look back at what people thought would be the next big thing, and none of them caught so much widespread interest as seltzer has.”
Though Vox said she filled Jewel-Osco stores with hard soda when that was what people wanted, she said she’s far more optimistic about the long-term outlook for hard seltzer. Hard seltzer, she said, “is a lifestyle brand.”
Hard soda?
“A novelty.”
Q: So, what makes a good hard seltzer?
A: Finally — a simple question!
Clean, well-integrated flavors. Crisp, tidy refreshment.
False, cloying and medicinal flavors doom the worst hard seltzers. And there are plenty of those.
Q: What are your favorites?
A: You know I have to save that for the end.
Q: OK, then, what are your least favorites?
A: As stated, there are a lot of stinkers out there. And every lineup has its highs and lows.
Truly has an absurd number of flavors, and the variety doesn’t work to its advantage; many of them come across as inauthentic. That’s especially true of Truly’s tropical and berry versions — pineapple, mango, black cherry, pomegranate and passion fruit — where the flavor runs roughshod, often in a messy and cloying way.
Most seltzer lineups have a grapefruit version, but Bon & Viv’s was my least favorite by far due to an odd sulfurlike note.
Most of the White Claw brands are well made, but its newly released unflavored Pure misses the mark, with a finish somewhere between alcoholic heat and green olives. I’d rather just have a vodka soda.
I was optimistic about Sound Craft’s cucumber seltzer, but it had an odd nutty flavor to it. Seek Out’s Raspberry Meyer Lemon smelled like edamame and didn’t taste much better. Wild Basin’s Lemon Agave Hibiscus is a mess.
The Henry’s Hard Sparkling and Smirnoff families are best left out altogether.
Q: Now will you tell us your favorites?
A: Indeed.
White Claw has earned its status as the industry leader; flavors are crisp and tidy. It keeps the portfolio relatively trim, and seems far less cluttered than the Truly lineup. Each of White Claw’s flavors — mango, black cherry, lime, grapefruit and raspberry — are well constructed and reasonably authentic. They’re bold and juicy, and though sometimes skewing a bit sweet, exist in a broader context where carbonation is threaded into a clean finish that honors the “seltzer” part of the equation.
Truly’s best brands are its citrus versions. Lime was my favorite, and I even preferred it to the White Claw version for drying out just a bit more.
As little as I liked Bon & Viv’s grapefruit flavor, I quite liked its clementine hibiscus. (Cranberry is OK, too.)
Press seltzers are quite tasty, and among the sweetest at 5 grams of sugar per can. For that reason, they succeed more as low-sugar hard sodas than as seltzers. Sound Craft’s Rosé, which is flavored (and colored) with blackberries, pulls off a dry winelike fruitiness that might mix nicely with a shot of gin. Same for much of the Seek Out portfolio, especially Pineapple Passion Fruit and Key Lime and Mint.
Q: So what’s the bottom line? Is hard seltzer here to stay?
A: It certainly has everyone’s attention — even The Beer Temple, which is one of the city’s better beer bars and bottle shops. Owner Chris Quinn realized he had heard plenty about hard seltzer but never tasted one, so he and two of his workers sampled as many as they could one day last week.
He was impressed with a handful of them — “At their best, they’re pretty effortless to drink,” he said — but he was mostly unimpressed thanks to flavors that were frequently muddled or overwhelming. He also articulated precisely why I’ve decided they won’t be a mainstay in my refrigerator.
“I don’t know if they offer any real drinking experience,” Quinn said.
They don’t.
Hard seltzer turns drinking alcohol into an afterthought. If I want a refreshing afterthought, I drink water. Or seltzer water without the booze. When I want alcohol, I want to revel in it to some small degree — whether a crisp helles lager or two fingers of mezcal. I want an experience. Hard seltzer is mostly just flavor.
“But let’s be real,” Quinn said. “Only a few people want ‘a drinking experience.’ A lot of people drink just to get alcohol in their body.”
Indeed. That’s what accounts for the existence of lemonade-flavored alcoholic drinks. And alcoholic drinks that taste like tea. And much of the light beer category. That urge will never go away, and it’s why flavored hard seltzer has done well. And why it will probably continue to do well — even when the next big thing pops up.
Q: So then what’s the next big thing?
A: Hard to say. But don’t bet against citrus-flavored, hemp-infused boozy kombucha.
