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.
Canned cocktails are a great idea in theory. Being able to eliminate the effort of a five-step mixed drink and replace it with a one-shot trip to the fridge or cooler is an easy sell.
In practice, they’re a lot dicier. It turns out jamming a bunch of moving parts into a 12-ounce can and hoping the ingredients meant to blend together for 45 minutes tops can last a full year without turning against each other and turning your drink into a David Cronenberg-ian mash-up of mutated anger is a very delicate balance. But that’s worked recently for basic vodka-soda mixes like High Noon, which has capitalized from a still-vast hard seltzer market to become a major player on liquor store shelves.
Spirited Hive is the next step in that evolution. And, even better for my purposes as an NFL writer trying to monetize his drinking problem,* they’re an official “Ready-to-Drink Partner” of the Tennessee Titans. As great as beer is with a football game, there’s value to finding a seven percent ABV cocktail you can slip in a koozie and sip across a quarter and a half.
This made me excited to give Spirited Hive a try. But while these drinks certainly put in the effort, they’re a little too involved for my taste. Let’s dig through all four primary flavors.