I loved this beer when I was in my twenties. My college-age daughter and her friends, however, don't even drink beer. They drink this fruit-flavored hard seltzers.
Really surprising to me how long it took for the seltzers and cocktail in a can stuff to take off. Especially among college age people my informal survey has around 70% of people preferring their flavor yet until like 5 years ago the only fruity beverage widely available was mikes hard lemonade. And not only do most young people prefer the taste, seltzers are much cheaper to make than beer and require much less expertise. I guess it was just a tradition is hard to break thing.
Mike's Hard Lemonade fills basically the same ecological niche that cider does in the UK, and does it really well because American-style lemonade is great.
Canned cocktails are generally pretty bad, and hard seltzers are fine but does anyone really enjoy the flavor? I feel like they're just a convenient low-calorie way to get drunk.
> I feel like they're just a convenient low-calorie way to get drunk.
Well yea, but for a lot of people that's what beer is too, and when given the choice between light beer and seltzer they prefer the seltzer.
Canned cocktails like cutwater have gotten incredibly popular in the last year or so here. I suspect because they're 15% alcohol and the same size as a beer so many people can just drink one and be good for the night.
Maybe this has to do with bars wanting to sell cocktails to these consumers and they thought popularizing seltzers would lose them money? I'm not in the industry so I'm not sure how close of ties the Bar Industry has with Alcohol Companies but I'm sure there is a lot of lobbying back and forth.
