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.
NÜTRL is pronounced like “neutral.” It uses an umlaut because its alcohol comes from the exotic land of British Columbia, Canada. This is all very stupid (not you, Canada, you’re lovely except for the home prices), but you need a hook to stand out in a crowded shelf space.
In that regard, NÜTRL has been a success. It’s slowly grown in stature, eventually landing alongside White Claw, High Noon and Truly when it comes to national seltzer brands. This makes sense; it’s a perfectly solid entry in a vast competition with a low bar of entry. If you’ve got bubbles, vodka and enough low-calorie flavor to make you forget about that vodka, you’re good to go.
That’s a bit of a spoiler for a review like this, but the fact remains just about any widely distributed hard seltzer is gonna hit that standard of drinkability (White Claw flirts with it, but gets a pass for being the first in the pool). NÜTRL’s offerings run a spectrum of quality. Some are undeniable hits. Some are misses that may only be enjoyed by a narrow audience. I drank a bunch of them and this is how I sorted that rainbow.
This isn’t an exhaustive list of all NÜTRL’s flavors. These are just the core varieties and the brand’s newest offerings, which means we’re getting into lemonades (yay) and cranberry juices (… less yay).
Oh, cool. Sour fruit no one really likes on its own with another sour fruit no one really likes on its own. I cracked the can and, well, this smells like medicine.
It tastes better than that, but it’s not great. This a rough sip, ending up chalky with all the chewable vitamin flavor ascribed to fake grapefruit. It tastes stale and bitter. While there’s an effort to bring some of the sweet flavor of the other NÜTRL cranberry flavors into the mix, it’s got nowhere to go.
These are two rigid, bitter flavors that turned out to make the IPA of the NÜTRL line. NÜTRL did not need its own IPA. It’s specifically for people who don’t want to deal with that kind of bitterness. Yet, here we are.
This smells exactly like the off-brand black cherry sodas I’d get from the local supermarket every now and then as a teenager. I assure you, this is a compliment of the highest order.
The seltzer itself doesn’t toe that line; this is way more cough syrup than sugary soda. You get artificial… well, not cherry, but “red” up front. Then you get a little medicinal flavor before you hit the dull thud of generic vodka. This feels much boozier than 4.5 percent ABV; there are more potent canned cocktails that taste a lot less heavy than this light seltzer.
It’s a little better out of the can, but the cherry flavor remains thin and unable to cover up the stale seltzer/vodka taste underneath. I had high expectations here, but this is a miss. Not undrinkable, but not great.
Unlike the black cherry, this pours clear. Interesting. It smells like light citrus and salt; halfway between a seltzer and a post-workout recovery drink.
It sorta tastes that way, too. There’s orange drink mix right up front, a little bit of acidic tang and the low current of vodka at the tail end to remind you this isn’t just a seltzer. That’s a little harsh; the taste is fine. But whatever real juice is involved here is vastly overshadowed by the “natural flavors” aimed at covering up the booze within.
It’s a little more focused straight from the can and ultimately it’s an easy to drink option for someone who wouldn’t want a light beer at a similar calorie/ABV point. But it tastes like generic “SPORTS DRINK.”
Maybe that’s a selling point for some. It’s just OK for me.
Oh hell yes. Blackberry is a cocktail cheat code. Everything grapefruit is in? That should be blackberry’s domain.
It smells slightly sour with the sugary current you expect from a lemonade. That sourness is front and center, but it fades as the juice blends into sweetness. The fact it finishes better than it started makes it easy to come back to, even if the blackberry is a little too tart for my liking at that outset.
The flavors are more focused out of the can. But that sour(ish) start remains, leaving this one as a tempting “what if?” This could be a lot better. As is, it’s still pretty OK.
I’m either cheating or learning from my past mistakes on this one by not pouring it into a glass over ice. It’s a beautiful 70 degree Sunday in Wisconsin and I’m on my deck after a day of yardwork/house repairs. This is generally beer time, but a lemonade sounds great right now.
The peach variety smells a little boozier off the top than NÜTRL’s other lemonades. It’s also impossible to take a whiff of it and not think of fuzzy navels or wine coolers. Not a complaint, necessarily, but notable. It’s sweet from the first sip, the peach front and center with only a little bit of citric acid to dial it back toward lemonade.
It finishes dry and, true to form, remains crushable on a hot day. It’s not quite as rich and flavorful as the strawberry (see below), but it’s fine.
This one’s also coming straight from the can on a warm day. It smells, pretty much, like every lemonade hard seltzer that preceded it; sweet and sour and a little boozy to remind you this is no longer a kid’s drink.
There’s a certain sweetness that accompanies the opening sip. It’s the current that runs through the whole drink and it’s unmistakably from sugar substitute. It’s not overpowering or cloying, but how much you enjoy the seltzer will hinge on how you do with Splenda and Splenda-like tastes.
For me, it’s appealing, if slightly annoying. That’s the price you’re paying for a 100 calorie, boozy lemonade. It’s refreshing but not satisfying. Which, if you’re looking for something to drink six of, that’s a feature and not a bug. It’s a drink that hinges on compromise, but it’s still pretty good for what it is.
Cracking this can unleashes a big wave of dried pineapple smell. Which is great and promising. Pineapple juice is an underrated mixer, particularly with vodka. Sure, it gets old fast, but there’s few wins as easy as mixing a clear liquor with some sweet tropical fruit.
That holds up when you take a pull from the glass. The pineapple hits that sweet spot of acidic and sweet, even if it suffers slightly from the thin flavor endemic to many of NÜTRL’s base varieties. It holds up through each sip, so instead of phasing through to seltzer and then vodka, you get one cohesive drink here.
Where other regularly available versions of NÜTRL came through as just “OK,” this one is crushable. This is the one you want on a hot day.
Like the rest of NÜTRL’s offerings, cracking the can brings up what you think a certain fruit smells like but not what it actually does. This one is somewhere between sour watermelon gummies and a Friendly’s Whattamelon Roll.
The taste is clean and crisp. The watermelon itself is light, but enough to cover the dry seltzer/vodka tracks that float to the top of NÜTRL’s less successful flavors. That fruit flavor is definitely more candy than based on the real thing, but that’s not a complaint. It could actually benefit from a little tartness. Some citric acid toward the end may make this whole thing feel like an energy drink, but I’d be on board.
Even so, there’s a simplicity here that works. It’s not as strong as the pineapple but similarly crushable. You don’t get much of an idea there’s booze involved here, which is probably the goal for every hard seltzer/canned cocktail company out there.
It pours with a head that flares up and quickly fizzles into nothing. It smells sweet and tart and has a little cotton candy feel to it.
That fizz carries each sip from your lips to your throat. You don’t quite notice the vodka up front, but you do notice this isn’t quite a regular carbonated lemonade. There’s some light strawberry, minor citrus and a lot of sugar-substitute sweetness. Fortunately, it finishes dry and clean, which makes it a poundable drink — particularly if you’ve got a sweat going.
Sipping from the can focuses those light flavors and makes it taste a bit more like a fountain lemonade… only, you know, with bubbles. It’s even more dangerous this way, crushable and with few hints there’s booze inside.
This smells incredible once you crack the can. It’s a tart melody of citrus and berry, with the cranberry loaded up front and some orange on the back end. It’s letting me know we’re doing a whole Ocean Spray thing here.
The first sip starts sour before quickly flipping to sweet. The sugar substitute here is working overtime to make this the Orange Julius of cranberry seltzers only, you know, not as frozen or dense. The tartness of the cranberry is controlled, which makes a lot of sense given this is a hard seltzer and, yeah, you want to be able to drink them a handful at a time.
The flavor combination isn’t my favorite, but it works. Whatever vodka’s in this 4.5 percent ABV cocktail is thoroughly erased by the cranberry, reminding us all why vodka-cranberry cocktails work so well (until you drink a dozen of them and look like you’re vomiting blood). Now mix that with a screwdriver, only thinner and carbonated. That’s where you end up here; it’s pretty good.
Well, this should be a layup. Cran-apple is the best established of all the cranberry brands, a combination of sweet and tart that works great. But cracking the can doesn’t smell like Ocean Spray. Instead it smells pretty much exactly like a sour apple Blow Pop.
Not a complaint, as that’s one of the two true Blow Pop flavors (I’ll let y’all debate the other, knowing the truth all along). It tastes that way; the cranberry is a conduit to tart flavor but mostly gets washed out by the apple. That makes this a Jolly Rancher in seltzer form.
That’s gonna be a bit divisive — especially since it’s alcoholic candy. Like the orange cranberry, you don’t taste any of the vodka inside. Maybe a little bit at the back end. But mostly it’s artificial apple, a little tangy but mostly sweet. And, hoooooo buddy, it is easy to drink.