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.
It was too easy. A burgeoning hard seltzer and canned cocktail market expanded the space for fruity, soda-adjacent alcohol. Sonic, the Oklahoma-based drive-in with the 44-ounce cups, had long prided itself on its expansive selection of sweet drinks going above and beyond the simple Coke-Sprite-tea/lemonade triumverate.
Thus, Sonic leapt into a crowded marketplace with familiar flavors and an even more recognizeable logo. The fast food company’s hard seltzers promise more than the standard citrus flavors. There’s signature tastes like their cherry limeade and Ocean Water. And, at 100 calories and five percent ABV per can, it walked an efficient line between boozy and, well not healthy, but slightly better-for-you than most drinks.
Sonic’s attempt to crack a new market — or at the very least streamline the process for anyone dumping a few shots into their enormous styrofoam cups — isn’t limited to its classic lineup. There’s a melon medley and tropical fruits and a few hard seltzer standbys. The question remains, however; is it any good?
Well, let’s see what we’re dealing with.
Melon Medley: D+
The actual taste is … a little weird. It combines the sharp sourness of unripe melon with the fruit flavor you’d actually want. It’s got a white wine flavor behind it that isn’t apparent in any of the other Sonic varieties. That’s overpowering the melon within, so while you get a hint of watermelon you mostly get cheap boxed wine from each can.
As feared, it’s a bummer. This is one of the more unique flavors you’ll find in any hard seltzer lineup and it’s not especially good. It’s generic and unpleasant, with only a sweet aftertaste to keep you coming back for more. It gets a little better as you go, but ultimately that’s a disappointment.
Orange Pineapple: C+
This smells great. Artificial orange and pineapple hit a different plane than the other Sonic drinks, particularly anything with lime involved. It’s like bringing a tropical breakfast to your lips.
But, eeeeehhhh, it doesn’t live up to that scent. The orange is simultaneously overpowering and a little hollow. The pineapple makes a cameo appearance at the end and this tastes more bitterly boozy than any of the four seltzers that preceded it whilst reviewing.
That doesn’t render it undrinkable, just basic. This feels like a Sam’s Club take on the style.
Classic Lemonade: C+
Great, this shouldn’t be too hard to lock down. Lemons, sugar (substitute), booze.
But ultimately it’s a little weak on the first two. The soft seltzer current of neutral spirits is way more powerful than the lemonade part, which comes across more as wrung-out wet naps than a crushable seltzer. It’s still easy to drink, but it should be significantly better than it is.
It’s frustrating, because this should be and easy win. The seeds of a poundable pool drink are there, but it’s ultimately hollow. Just add an extra 10 calories and make it taste like real lemonade. I’d be happy with that trade-off! Hell, do it for everything in the Sonic lineup!
Cherry limeade: B
The first can I drank for review doubles as the brand’s most recognizable drink. Although maybe that’s Ocean Water, I’ve only spent about four years of my life in Sonic territory. Cracking the can unleashes a borderline medicinal rush of cherry, which is … not great.
The taste itself is decidedly seltzer, though both the cherry and lime are prevalent. The lime is nothing like the 3-4 fresh wedges you’d get in an actual cup. It’s more like it was poured from a large plastic barrel labeled “CITRUS, SOUR.”
The cherry isn’t much better but the two sides work together for an ultimately pleasant drink. It’s not as good as you want it to be but better than a lot of seltzers. It stays roughly the same as it warms up, so it’s consistent at least.
Original Limeade: B
Here’s the easiest target among the Sonic seltzers to hit. Booze and lime is a tried and true combination that has a high floor (and a modest ceiling, but still). It smells hard like artificial lime; more bitter than sweet or sour.
OK, not a great start.
The beverage itself is citrus and sweet. It’s easy to drink, but it doesn’t really taste like limeade. It’s just sort of “CITRIC ACID SELTZER’ in its most generic form. Which isn’t really a bad thing. It tastes fine. Sweet and tangy despite its very apparent inauthenticity.
That’s an improvement over White Claw’s patented “hint of flavor” brewing process. There’s a lot to taste, as nebulous as it may be, and it’s crushable at five percent ABV. The neutral spirits are prevalent, but never overpowering. You know this is a hard seltzer throughout, but it still tastes good enough that you won’t mind.
Ocean Water: B+
The taste, however, is much more reassuring. Smooth to the point of creaminess, the coconut is actually well balanced and the finish is Splenda sweet. The absence of citric acid works in its favor after the limeade’s relative harshness.
This is easy to drink, with little to suggest the five percent ABV count underneath. But there is a bit of coconut fatigue that sets in toward the end of the can. As it warms, you get more of the wine-adjacent flavor that, for example, allows some places to make a margarita without tequila. Keeping it cold is paramount to enjoying Ocean Water, which suggests a glass and a pile of crushed ice is way to drink it.
Mango Guava: B+
Mango is a hard seltzer cheat code. Its inherent creaminess papers over the neutral spirit flavor necessary to get you to 100 calories at five percent ABV. Like the other Sonic seltzers it smells powerfully sweet, but this at least seems more authentic to the source material than the limeade, which was a film adaptation of Sleeping Beauty where the dwarves go back in time to stop the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
The taste is sweet and sour candy. There’s more natural(ish) flavor here than in that limeade, and it’s light enough that you can go through a can in five minutes without issue. Granted, it still tastes very much like a hard seltzer, but you knew that coming into this whole experiment. The flavor is solid enough to be a proper low-cal tailgate pounder. For having just one gram of sugar it’s plenty sweet.
Lemon Berry: A-
That’s a minor complaint for a can that’s both enjoyable and crushable. The dry finish keeps you coming back, staying berry focused throughout. I was worried about this after how frustrating the classic lemonade came out. But this is the best citrus offering you get from Sonic. Who knew a little raspberry would be the difference?
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 Sonic Hard Seltzers over a cold can of Hamm’s?
I could do a couple of these — a cold can of the Ocean Water or the lemon berry, for sure. But mostly these lag behind the other 100 calorie canned cocktails and seltzers out there. That’s a little frustrating, since I was a big fan of enormous happy hour diet cherry limeades for 89 cents back in the day, but it’s kinda standard for a mass produced seltzer. Sonic’s foray into the booze world is fine, it’s just not going to surprise you for better or worse.
