Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Previously, we’ve folded these in to our betting guides, whether that’s been for the NFL slate or a bizarrely successful run through the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey.
Like I’ve said before, I’m open to trying just about anything. But after being tricked into sipping sunscreen salad dressing (TikTok’s healthy Cokes), I needed a win.
Simply Spiked Lemonade was already on my radar after hearing good things about their foray into the world of adult beverages. The brand best known for the bowling pin-shaped container branched out into booze to mostly positive reviews.
Would it be the new hotness in a market that’s turned hard to beer alternatives in the summer months? Or would White Claw’s unfortunate foray into lemonade be the template for disappointment?
Well damn, this pours with a delightful fizz, but I wasn’t expecting any kind of carbonation from my lemonade. Those bubbles help the drink retain its bite and keep from venturing into wine cooler levels of stale-ness, but I kinda wish they’d gone for a purer lemonade-vodka mix. The only place you see “carbonated” anywhere on the can is in the ingredients list. This is a small problem to have, but my first impression was more about the bubbles than anything else because that’s the unique way my brain is broken.
Fortunately, the spiked lemonade is good enough to make me forget about all that and soon that CO2 proves beneficial. Where White Claw’s lemonades got stuck on a sour note of citric acid, Simply’s offering is lighter, crisper and easier to drink. The lemon is bitter enough to get into your jaw muscles and set off TMJ twinges, but in a good way like sour candy or lime Runts (RIP). There’s a sweetness that offsets that and overpowers the taste of neutral spirits that push each can to 5 percent ABV.
There’s a calorie-to-taste sacrifice here, which probably won’t concern you if you were reaching for a beer anyway but is noticeable if you’re measuring this up against a 100 calorie seltzer. I get that, but this tastes considerably more flavorful than any of the hard seltzer lemonades I’ve had before it. Only High Noon really comes close, and we know how much I liked those guys.
Oh man, this first sip is great. The sweetness of the watermelon balances with the sour of the lemonade really well, making this less acidic than the straight-up version. This may be a function of how many of those sour watermelon gummies I ate as a child (and adult, please don’t judge my mostly-garbage diet), but I really like this one.
The neutral spirit undercurrent is much less apparent here. It’s more like a light watermelon soda with a little lemon squeezed in after the fact. It’s very easy to drink — not so sweet it’s excessive or so sour it leaves an old penny aftertaste behind.
I am a little concerned about the sugar content of these cans. Not for any caloric reason. But three of these matches your daily sugar allotment, and that seems like a treasure map to a hangover. Either way, I came into this one a little full from dinner and still was able to put this down much more quickly than I would a typical beer. The stale alcohol taste of most seltzers doesn’t show up until the end. Even then, it’s pretty minimal.
Like watermelon, the added flavor stands out right away. The alcohol is a little more apparent here, but it’s still a soft undercurrent to the lemonade on top. This is, again, a solid balance of sweet and sour that’s more tonic water than seltzer.
This one is also very easy to drink — not overly carbonated, sweet but dry. This is also a notch above the plain lemonade. I’m a big fan, this is great.
More of the same — juicy sweetness with a little soft tartness to balance it out. I’d write more but I’d just be repeating myself. Regular lemonade was just OK. The three other flavors in this mix pack rule.
All in all, Simply Spiked Lemonade was almost everything I hoped it could be. Even the weakest flavor was still entirely drinkable. The overall result was outstanding. Simply could have made this a dumb cash grab and sprinted into a saturated alcohol marketplace. Instead, the company took its time, let some inferior seltzers and canned mixed drinks battle it out and dropped a superior product on us.
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