Hard Seltzer & RTD
Low load per can, sold by the twelve-pack
Canned seltzers and cocktails. The vodka-based seltzers are genuinely among the lightest drinks on this site per serving, which is the opposite of what most people assume. The canned cocktails beside them are not.
- Typical ABV
- 4–13%
- Base
- Vodka, tequila or a fermented sugar base
- Congeners
- Very Low
- Histamines
- Very Low
- Polyphenols
- Very Low
- Sulfites
- Very Low
- Tannins
- Very Low
- Sugar
- Low
- Additives
- Moderate
Hard seltzer is the category this site expected to dislike and does not. A 4.5% vodka seltzer with zero sugar is, per serving, one of the lowest-load alcoholic drinks you can buy: no congeners worth measuring, no tannins, no histamines, no sulfites, and around 90 calories, all of it ethanol. On chemistry alone it beats every wine, every beer above 4%, and every aged spirit on the site.
It is also the category where per-serving chemistry is least useful as advice. These are sold in twelve-packs, chilled, at 4.5%, with nothing bitter or strong-tasting to slow anyone down. The honest reading is that a seltzer is a better drink than a stout and a worse container than a bottle of wine, because a bottle of wine at least announces how much it holds. And the canned cocktails sitting on the same shelf at 12.5% are a different product entirely, carrying three times the alcohol per can and the sugar the seltzers left out.
What changes the chemistry
- ▸Vodka-based or fermented-sugar-based, and the label tells you which
- ▸Sugar is genuinely low in seltzers and genuinely not in canned cocktails
- ▸Nutrition is printed, which almost no other category on this site manages
- ▸Gluten-free across the board, since none of it is grain-fermented
- ▸The can is the risk: nothing paces you and a twelve-pack is one purchase