Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. 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.
There are three trends I’ve noticed as brewers and distillers ramp up their efforts to ply our great nation with booze this summer. The first is that tequila, while never truly out of style, is getting a big push in the seltzer and canned cocktail game. The second is that we’re throwing peach into everything and making a bunch of good drinks taste like gummy candy (not a judgment, peach rings rule).
The third is that we’re giving hard tea another shot. That’s great, because having a market dominated by Twisted Tea provides a massive opportunity.
Hard coffee was, despite its potential, a bust. Per Kate Bernot — who is a wonderful beer writer you should absolutely follow — canned, boozed-up coffees sold only 1 percent of the volume that Twisted Tea comprised in 2022. And Twisted Tea, as we’re all aware, suuuuuuucks.
So instead there’s been a push toward expanding hard tea beyond its current horizon. Earlier this year I kicked the tires on Spiked Arnold Palmer and found it to be a worthy replacement for the bile-tasting industry leader. Now comes Jiant, a craft-brewed sparkling hard tea that clocks in at seven percent ABV and between 130 and 150 calories per 12 ounce can, depending on your source. My variety pack came with four flavors; peach, kiwi strawberry, mixed berry and half & half.
One of those is pretty good. Let’s find out which.
Peach iced tea: C
That holds true through the first sip. It’s trying to be flavored tea, but tastes overwhelmingly like white wine. I was happy to see the seven percent ABV since most of these canned cocktails clock in at a beer-adjacent five percent. Jiant ups the booze quotient and while it’s a worthy risk it doesn’t pay off. The alcohol is overpowering, and while that’s a solid way to stand out in a landscape where most cans taste like light sodas it’s not working for me.
Sipping from the can is better. That wine-ish aftertaste persists but the carbonation is crisp and the sweetness of the juice, puree and cane syrup is more apparent. It’s significantly different than it tastes poured into a glass.
That bumps this up to a C — I don’t know if I’d finish more than one out of the can, but in its more concentrated form it’s a much more pleasant experience. The aftertaste is still entirely too wine-y for me. Maybe the next round will be better.
Kiwi Strawberry iced tea: C
The good news is that white wine aftertaste is minimal here, making this easier to drink. The bad news is it doesn’t really taste like much. The tea aspect is limited and there’s a little bit of fruit there. It comes through more clearly the more you drink.
Like the peach it’s a little more palatable out of the can. It’s a very easy drinker but it’s not something I’m going to savor.
Mixed Berry: C+
The berries are strong and sweet and there’s a little more tea to this batch than the previous two. That white wine taste remains, but this is the most drinkable of the bunch so far for a professed non-wine drinker. It’s boozy grapes up front, then sweet tea and fruit on the way out.
It’s an improvement, but it’s still not my jam.
Half & Half iced tea and lemonade: B
The lemon comes through clearly even if the tea is hidden deep underneath. It tastes the most like anything of any of the flavors in the bunch, even if it’s not quite an Arnold Palmer. While the other three varieties tasted like fruit-adjacent booze, this is a flavor I could name without looking at the can (assuming you let on that it was tea first and gave me a couple guesses).
This is, by far, the easiest to drink. It’s the one that tastes the most like tea and not like another off-the-grid canned cocktail snuck into the bottling plant. I could run down a whole four-pack of these, especially at 150 calories per 7 percent ABV cocktail.
Would I drink it instead of a Hamm's?
Welcome to a new feature on these reviews; a pass/fail mechanism where I compare whatever I’m drinking to my baseline cheap beer. That’s the standby from the land of sky-blue waters, Hamm’s. So the question to answer is: on a typical day, would I opt for Jiant Hard Tea over a cold can of Hamm’s?
The Half & Half? Maybe, depending on the day. But the rest weren’t for me as someone who doesn’t really drink wine but couldn’t shake the wine-y undercurrent of 75 percent of the flavors.
