Beverage of the Week: White Claw's new lemonade line is not an improvement

Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Previously, we’ve folded these in to our betting guides, whether that’s been for the NFL slate or a bizarrely successful run through the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. 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. 

I have nothing against White Claw. I just don’t think it tastes like anything.

The brand that helped launch the ongoing hard seltzer trend has, for me, stayed too true to its source material to be all that enjoyable. Every flavor offers a faint hit of what it could be, washed away by dry bubbles. It’s a reasonable alternative that tastes fine on ice but has been utterly skippable when it comes to my beer fridge.

I assumed all seltzers were roughly in that range before High Noon’s vodka/soda-based offerings changed my mind. Those tasted like actual cocktails while retaining the fizz and low calorie count of its genre. With summer set to settle upon Wisconsin at some point — 66 and rainy all weekend! — it felt like a good time to give White Claw another shot.

That led me to their new REFRSHR line of flavors which promise “a completely new take on lemonade.” That seems ambitious since there are already a bunch of other hard seltzer lemonades on the market, but the mix pack I was sent also led me to Google whatever the hell “calamansi” is, so there’s at least a partial truth in that statement. The flavors seem tasty enough and at 5.0 percent alcohol and 100 calories, it packs more of a punch than light beer or High Noon without ruining anyone’s diet.

So sure, let’s see what White Claw’s gonna use to secure its standing in the seltzer world.