Incomprehensible: non-alcoholic Hard Seltzer, why?
I’m incredibly happy that the Hard Seltzer hype has blown over to the Netherlands, because what an ideal drink this is. Especially in summer during festivals; beer makes me feel so full after a while, and wine makes me very sour, but Hard Seltzer… I can seriously drink that all day long. It’s fresh, light, and the fact that it’s low in calories is of course a nice bonus.
But White Claw, a Hard Seltzer brand, has now launched something I absolutely do not understand: non-alcoholic Hard Seltzer.
What’s the point?
What is Hard Seltzer? It’s a mix of sparkling water, alcohol and a natural fruit flavour. So what do you get when you remove the alcohol? Exactly. Sparkling water. White Claw thinks it has reinvented the wheel once again and is now selling sparkling water — okay, okay, with a hint of flavour — and charging nineteen dollars for twelve cans. But surely you’d have to be completely out of your mind to fall for this? Just buy a bottle of sparkling water, which by now also comes in all kinds of flavours, or even better: buy the supermarket own-brand version and you’ll be even cheaper off!
Don’t get me wrong, I enthusiastically welcome non-alcoholic alternatives. Because when I feel like having a beer but don’t want to drink, I’m very happy with my Heineken 0,0%. I find non-alcoholic wine more often a miss than a hit, but even then: it’s good that it exists. But surely we’re not going to start selling non-alcoholic vodka 7Up too? Because then you’re simply drinking 7Up. Or a non-alcoholic Irish Coffee. No, then you’re just drinking black coffee with whipped cream.
At least they’re doing their best
The cans also say they contain ‘hydrating electrolytes’, which is really just a collective term for ingredients such as salt, calcium and magnesium — not exactly ingredients for which you should be drinking this overpriced sparkling water. They also promise ‘a drink that tastes and feels like an alcoholic drink, without the alcohol’. I have no idea what they mean by the feeling being the same, because after a litre of sparkling water I’m not exactly staggering around either.
No, I’m going to skip this one — although it does sound a lot edgier if I start saying that I’m making myself a non-alcoholic drink whenever I make a bottle of sparkling water with my Sodastream.
