One of the many staples of the coronavirus experience is virtual happy hours. If you’re not doing them already, please start living your best life and get on it. It’s a great way to feel like you’re hanging out with friends and to show off whatever happens to be in your sad coffee mug that evening — be it wine or just straight tequila. Whatever floats your boat.
During a rare grocery store run, we happened to run across a variety pack of Ska Brewing’s hard seltzers recently released to the masses. Because of our many, many upcoming virtual happy hours (we’re very popular, OK?!), we found ourselves adopting one of the boxes and bringing it home with us for said happy hour purposes. Not only that, but we also needed to lay off the beers.
We dedicated many a hour sipping on these in our living room, and decided it was about time the world knew our hard seltzer thoughts.
Blood OrangeI was bracing myself for this drink to be a lot sweeter than it was, but if you’re the type of person who gets nauseous just looking at a can of blood orange hard seltzer because you can imagine how sickeningly sweet it probably is, think again. Ska does a good job of walking that line and holds back on overloading it with sugar. It has just enough of an orange essence to keep you reaching for another can without feeling guilty. Besides, how can you look yourself in the mirror after saying “no” to blood-orange flavored anything?
However, as a sugar fiend, I would not mind another 9897324823 grams of sugar with my hard seltzer. OK, OK, I know that’s not the point of hard seltzers, but let me have this!
Hibiscus LimeWhile I am a fan of lime, I was a bit nervous about popping open this can. Obviously I will consume anything at this point, but I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect with this one, and I found myself pleasantly surprised by this one.
Turns out, hibiscus lime is a great pairing with the bitterness of hard seltzer. The two, we found, go together like a booze-dipped peanut butter and jelly sandwich, just with a lot less sugar and carbs. It had a nice bite to it, with a lime-flavored aftertaste that kept me awake for these late-night virtual happy hours.
Black RaspberryThis was my personal favorite of the whole bunch. Not gonna lie, I thought my favorite was going to be blood orange, but I instead found myself immediately finishing off these cans first out of the bunch. This one was a total winner in my book.
I love the cool, tart flavor of raspberry, and the longer I drank these cans, the smoother they got. Out of all the flavors, I felt that black raspberry emerged the most between each sip. There was no mistaking this fruity flavor, which is simultaneously not overpowering for those who can’t say “no” to fruity drinks.
Amanda Push
