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.
The summer of 2023 has been the backdrop to a hard tea revival. Several new contenders have come after the shoddy throne upon which Twisted Tea proudly sits and watches monster truck rallies.
Sometime it’s worked well in a common sense mashup — see Arnold Palmer Spiked Half & Half’s debut back in April. Other times it’s been a bit of a mess, like how Jiant made a bunch of tea that tastes like white wine, somehow. Today we’re on to our third entry of the summer — Loverboy’s low calorie, slim can offerings.
Loverboy isn’t quite coming after Twisted Tea. At 90 calories per can it’s clear they’re pushing up against the hard seltzer marketplace. Advertising an all organic recipe list, sweetened with monk fruit, means its taking a more upscale approach to the concept. So did it pan out? Or are we going to regret trying to make hard tea a thing again?
Half and half: B
It tastes a little more acidic than you’d like for an Arnold Palmer. That lemon juice and carbonation snap off the flavor instead of letting that tea mellow on your tongue for a while. But it’s still sharp and refreshing, hitting with a crispness that other hard teas fail to crack.
Drinking from the can magnifies that acid with a little metallic taste and makes things a little bit worse. Find a Solo cup and pour this one if you’ve got the opportunity; it does seem to make a difference.
That said, it’s a solid entry onto the hard tea landscape, particularly at 90 calories per can. Those are hard seltzer numbers but it’s got noticeably more flavor than a White Claw. Granted, most things do, but that’s a good place to start.
Black cherry vanilla: B+
The issue with cherry flavored alcoholic drinks is that you butt up against familiar cough syrup memories and, yep, that comes into play here as well. It’s not overpowering, but that’s the first thing that came to mind. Fortunately that dissipates as vanilla and the tartness of the tea help to wind down the up-front sweetness.
Sipping from the can helps focus those flavors, but it also introduces a cherry aftertaste you don’t get when poured over ice. Concerns aside, it’s very easy to drink. It’s well balanced, so that while the cherry juice is the headliner every ingredient is accounted for. And I put down my can in roughly seven minutes, which doesn’t seem like much but my god, I am a slow drinker. With that in mind, that bumps black cherry vanilla up from a “B” to a B+.”
Mango pear: C-
Vaguely traumatic memories aside, the taste captures the sweetness of a mango but not its essential creaminess. The pear makes a cameo appearance, but doesn’t do enough to earn equal billing on the can. This is a situation where the fruit and tea involved create something that’s too acidic to be enjoyable, for me at least.
While black cherry vanilla got drank quickly because it was good, this is going down fast because big, dreadful gulps seem like the best way to dispose of it. Maybe you’ll have better luck, but mango pear is decidedly outside my circle of trust.
Pineapple hibiscus: B
There’s a lot going on with the first sip. Like the previous two flavors, the tea takes a backseat to the flavors infused within. The sweet and sour pineapple weaves through the floral hibiscus to create a well balanced drink. It doesn’t lean too hard in any one direction like the mango pear did. It comes in hard, mellows, then leaves a cool, dry, tart aftertaste behind.
It’s better than I’d expected from this unique mashup. I don’t love it, but I’ll drink more of it. Great call, Loverboy.
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 Loverboy’s hard teas over a cold can of Hamm’s?
Yeah, I’d probably have a black cherry vanilla or a pineapple hibiscus, particularly if, say, I’m coming back from a vacation where I spent two weeks attempting to eat every hot dog in Scandinavia (totally hypothetical situation, I assure you). The half and half is a maybe and the mango pear is a hard no.
