Is this the drink for people who find hard seltzer undrinkable?
I’ve never minced my words: I think hard seltzer is gross. I’ve tasted enough varieties to know that this whole movement can pass me by without giving me FOMO. Stale, weird, with a strange whiff of pretending to be healthy – not a fan. But what about other ‘hard’ drinks?
The English word hard is used in this trend for drinks you probably already know, but to which alcohol has subsequently been added. Lemonade, sparkling water (in the case of hard seltzer), and now also: iced tea. I was allowed to put it to the test, curious to see whether this would be the drink that would make me see the hard light and become a convert.
What is BOZU Hard Iced Tea?
This is a carbonated, sugar-free iced tea with vodka (4.5% ABV). There are two flavors: Green ‘with the taste of ginger and lemon’ and Peach ‘with the taste of peach and hibiscus’. The elegant cans are colorful but cleanly designed, and with a 250 ml can costing around €1.99, you take in 65 kilocalories. According to BOZU’s founders, it was “the challenge of enriching the recognizable, fresh taste of iced tea with a smooth vodka while keeping the whole thing sugar-free”.
Somewhat hopeful
And that last part is exactly where the problem lies for me. I had blindly assumed that, as is usually the case with hard seltzer, this hard iced tea wouldn’t (need to) taste sweet either. That was one of the things that piqued my curiosity. Look, sparkling water with a splash of vodka also tastes like nothing, which is why I find it so stale, but with this drink I hoped it would at least still taste like unsweetened tea.
Sweet, but not quite
Unfortunately. Apparently, a sweet element still had to be added. I think that because these drinks make such a big deal about calories, this was solved by using sweeteners. And we all know what sweeteners taste like. Sweeteners. And you know, with Coke Zero, I can tolerate the taste of sweeteners because it’s overpowered by an enormous, burp-inducing amount of carbonation. But that’s not in this drink either.
Do your thing
And so what remains is a drink that, in my opinion, falls between the cracks. It isn’t healthy, it isn’t fizzy, it tastes both of sweeteners and of not-very-tasty tea, and I’m not quite sure what to do with it. But! To each their own. If I’ve now mentioned a whole bunch of things that make you think ‘that’s exactly what I’m looking for’, then by all means don’t let my judgment stop you from sprinting to an Albert Heijn XL store, where it’s available. If you live within Amsterdam’s ring road and don’t want to leave the house, delivery service Flink delivers these drinks.
It may also be that you experience the taste quite differently; we’re all different. But for me it’s clear: if I want lemonade or iced tea with alcohol from now on, I’ll make it myself.
Read also:
- I made lemonade… with genever – and here’s the amazing recipe
- This is the best-tasting can of gin and tonic from the supermarket
- Batching is the latest trend in home cocktails, and you want in too (plus 3 recipes!)
