Will hard seltzers fizzle out in the new year?
Want a suggestion for a drink for New Year’s Eve? Something crisp, bubbly and representative of recent trends in beer?
Go with a hard seltzer, I guess.
That’s what I drank last New Year’s Eve. I toasted out 2019 with a grapefruit-hibiscus seltzer from Pond Farm Brewing. It was fine, clean and carbonated, and fruity, but I wasn’t blown away. We also had a four-pack of the San Rafael brewery’s Devil’s Gulch Hazy IPA, and throughout 2020 I would buy that particular beer several times.
I have not, however, become a return customer in the hard seltzer category.
Am I missing something? Other people are evidently enthralled by hard seltzers. These drinks have been widely discussed as one of the most significant and successful current trends in the alcoholic drinks industry.
Several years ago, hard seltzer sales in the United States totaled $20 to $30 million per year. Those numbers have skyrocketed. In the fiscal year ending June 13, brewers sold $2.7 billion worth of hard seltzer, according to a June report from the industry analysis firm Nielsen.
The same report explained that consumers increasingly recognize hard seltzer as its own type of drink — that is, not just a kind of beer (which they are not). This suggests that hard seltzers, as a category, have grown legs, and perhaps wings, and have attained a critical mass that will carry them forward as a major competitor with beer, as well as wine, cider, sake and distilled liquor.
This doesn’t pose a threat, however, to breweries, since they’re the ones making hard seltzers. Given the economic impacts suffered in the past 10 months by breweries worldwide, the surge in seltzers has certainly been a boon.
But will hard seltzers ultimately compromise the reputation of brewers? That’s what Coloradobased craft beer industry promoter Marty Jones thinks will happen, if it hasn’t already.
Jones says he recognizes the important service that hard seltzers have offered breweries during the economic strains of the pandemic. They’ve provided “an income lifeline and helped to keep breweries open and people employed,” he says.
But, he adds, “Seltzers have diluted the message of craft beer. We’ve gone from the wonders of artfully crafted ales and lagers, made with the best ingredients, passion, care and patience, to flavored carbonated water.”
He believes the fastand-easy process of making hard seltzers blurs the previously clear distinction “between small-batch treasure and mass-market commodity” and “sends a mixed message to consumers.
“’ We’re passionate about our lofty standards and liquid art,’” Jones quips. “‘ Want some kiwi-flavored water?’”
But some brewers have argued that making seltzers is itself a craft, requiring skill and knowledge to master. The clarity and lightness of the beverage, which usually contains no malt and no hops, means that flaws and off-flavors cannot easily be obscured. Thus, if a brewer goofs and ferments too long or at the wrong temperature, an entire batch of the stuff might have to go down the drain.
Moreover, consumers want seltzers as many drinkers grow increasingly concerned about the health impacts of drinking. Many are trying to consume less alcohol, and seltzers generally ring in around 5% alcohol-by-volume (though that number is merely a reflection of how much white sugar the brewer chose to pour into the pot).
Drinkers are also increasingly trying to consume fewer calories with their alcohol. Most beers carry lots of sugar, whereas seltzers — like wines and ciders — can be fermented dry, meaning fewer calories for any given alcohol level.
Which reminds me of the brut, or dry, IPA. It is made with an enzyme that allows beer yeast to ferment every last morsel of barley sugar, whereas usually about 25% of that sugar remains inaccessible, requiring brewers to add more malt in order to achieve their desired alcohol level.
If fewer “calories-per-alcohol” is a major selling point for hard seltzers, I wonder why they’ve skyrocketed into popularity while the brut IPA faded into obscurity. My theory (which I won’t discuss in length again) is that brewers failed to advertise the reduced calorie point in their brut IPAs, and consumers lost interest in what they saw as just another IPA spinoff.
So, on the eve of 2021, I’m called to question where hard seltzers will go in the next year, and if skeptics like me will come around by 2022.