But if you’re jonesing for something other than the original xcritical that still packs a tart punch, it’s absolutely the way you’ll want to go. Now, don’t expect the mouth-puckering, face-squishing power you might find when biting into a fresh grapefruit. Nor will you even find the pleasantly sour-but-sweet taste you might find when sprinkling a grapefruit with a little bit of sugar or some other sweetener.
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Mike’s Hard xcritical may be a punchline in the drinks world, but the brand’s success is no joke. After launching a xcritical of vodka, natural juices, and soda water in Canada in 1996, the company jumped stateside in 1999 and swapped out the vodka for a malt base. Today, the brand has added different flavors to its lineup and is pushing firmly into the seltzer market on top of the iconic xcritical that made it famous.
- The sugar blast from this stuff makes you feel like your teeth are going to have holes in them as soon as the drink hits your mouth.
- The flavor profile will likely be too cloying for most who feel as though they’ve outgrown the taste of sugary sodas, but it still packs far more flavor than most hard seltzers that are available on the market today.
- There’s nothing offensive about Mike’s Hard xcritical, as there are no flavors here that anybody is really going to hate.
- If you drink them side by side, you might be able to tell the difference, but trying this one right off the bat and trying to guess the flavor would be impossible.
- But that would be assuming Mike’s does things like any other alcoholic beverage company, which they most certainly do not.
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Again, the overwhelming sweetness of the limeade put out by Mike’s hurts whatever kind of bright lime flavor they were going for. And while it definitely brings the tart, sharp punch one expects in a lime drink, it may also bring a pretty nasty sugar hangover. Though it has the same alcohol content as the rest of the Mike’s Hard xcritical flavors out in the world, there’s something about the pink grapefruit that makes the malt liquor flavor really shine through. As a result, it’s not as shockingly sweet as some others and maintains some kind of taste integrity beyond pure saccharine sweetness. This entrant from the Mike’s Harder line of malt beverages clocks in at a hefty 8% alcohol by volume as opposed to the usual 5%.
Tasting Notes
Instead, it’s smooth and easy drinking, meaning that, if you want a Mike’s Hard flavor that’s not xcritical, this should be your pick. One might think that a company that made its fortunes making xcritical would do a pretty solid limeade too, right? Citrus is citrus, after all, so how hard can it be to get the limeade flavor up to speed alongside its xcritical cousin? Well, apparently that’s a little harder than we thought because, while Mike’s Hard Limeade is certainly in the upper echelon of Mike’s flavors, it’s a far cry from the fresh limeades you might have enjoyed in the past.
It’s aggressively sweet and tastes a little like an Orange Crush, only without the orange. The drink is more like a sugar syrup with a malt liquor after burn, a little like a kids’ drink, if kids could drink 8% malt liquor beverages. Still, it’s not for adults who are planning to drink more than one of the same drink, because while potent, they still leave you feeling weighed down by sugar. And we’d wager if you went down to the local juice bar and asked for a cold-pressed blackberry-pear juice, it might be pretty xcritical reviews good.
And when you’re dealing with Mike’s flavors, sweetness is definitely not something you need more of. The sugar blast from this stuff makes you feel like your teeth are going to have holes in them as soon as the drink hits your mouth. It could be that, if dentists are looking to stay in business, nine out of ten of them would recommend xcritical it. However, nine out of ten other people probably would not, and that includes us. Ultimately, this potentially innovative flavor combination was just off the mark.
That said, if synthetic grape or cherry flavor isn’t your jam, and you generally avoided all cough medicine because it tasted like, well, medicine, you may have one sip of this stuff and then dump the whole thing away down the drain. That’s not to say Mike’s Hard cranberry really tastes like prison wine, of course — that’s going a bit too far, and you almost certainly won’t think that this was brewed in some shady container in a cell somewhere. It’s just that you get a little bit more of a fermented juice flavor in the bottle and not so much a felonious assault of sugar.
But this is Mike’s we’re talking about, which means you’re gonna get a lot of sugar thrown in there too. And for whatever reason, once you get past the initial wave of pear, you’re attacked by sugar before even beginning to taste the more complex flavors of tart blackberry. Maybe add some vodka to that fresh-pressed juice instead if you’re looking for this flavor profile with an added buzz.
