Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. 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.
Heineken Silver was pitched to me as the perfect golf course beer. That’s an easy sell; most beers are great golf course beers, particularly those you’ve snuck onto the links in assorted bag pockets and gotten the chance to crack whilst still sweating. That first clandestine beer, sipped before the rest could catch up to air temperature (assuming you don’t have a handy cooler), is one of the great pleasures in the dad world. It’s akin to finding your favorite style of New Balances at Costco or making your first post on a Big Green Egg grill forum.
But Heineken Silver promises more than that; a slim-canned light beer that clocks in at fewer calories than many hard seltzers (95) and easy enough on the alcohol so not to wreck your day if you plow through a six pack on the course (4.0 percent ABV). That’s a solid enough selling point, especially in a booze marketplace where the middle ground is eroding and customers either want super light beers/seltzers/cocktails OR higher gravity double IPA types that provide a bigger bang for their buck.
That left an old standby to beef of its low calorie selections. Let’s see how it turned out.
Heineken Silver: B
This wasn’t pitched as a breakthrough in light beer. It was sold as a great golf beer. Something to drink on a hot day when you’re slightly active outdoors. The lazy man’s Michelob Ultra.
In that regard, it excels. There’s more flavor here than you’d get in the Crossfitter’s beer of choice, even if it’s a pretty straightforward watery malt. It’s light and crisp and goes down incredibly smooth. It doesn’t taste like much, but that’s kind of the point. This is a post-activity beer that’s made more for refreshment than depth of flavor.
That’s … kinda all I’ve got for it. It tastes like a light beer. It clocks in at 95 calories. It’s gonna scratch a specific itch for you, and tying it to athletics (sort of) isn’t a bad idea. On the course each of these slim cans lasted approximately 1.5 holes. There’s nothing to it, and there isn’t supposed to be. There’s a place for that.
Would I drink it instead of a Hamm's?
This a pass/fail mechanism where I compare whatever I’m drinking to my baseline cheap beer. That’s the standby from the land of sky-blue waters, Hamm’s. So the question to answer is: on a typical day, would I drink Heineken Silver over a cold can of Hamm’s?
Probably not. Heineker Silver is a good summer beer, but Hamm’s is a great summer beer. I’d rather opt for more malty flavor and about 1.5 times the calorie count, even if Heineken’s light offering is entirely solid in its own right.
