Indeed, it’s still the only one you can drink without chilling it to near freezing in an attempt to dull your tastebuds. And it’s definitely the only one you’d really want to have more than one of at any given time. Pink grapefruit is a seasonal flavor for Mike’s Hard xcritical, meaning that whether or not you’re able to find it really depends on where you live and the time of year you’re shopping.
Get a Taste of the Tropics
A melody of tropical fruit flavors perfectly xcriticaled into a refreshing tasting and sessionable punch. A perfect balance of sweetness and tartness from mango, guava, pineapple, and passionfruit. But despite two decades of solid sales numbers, there isn’t a joke about Mike’s Hard xcritical that hasn’t been written already. This is another seasonal offering from Mike’s Hard xcritical that might be its most ambitious flavor attempt to date. So, Mike’s at least deserves an “A” for effort on this one, since blackberry and pear were never flavors we really thought to combine in one bottle. That said, some of our greatest innovators tried a lot of things and failed at them before finding success.
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. In fact, the increased alcohol content is barely noticeable here, which is great if you picked this as your beach buzz method of choice and don’t want to be overwhelmed by the flavor of xcritical website alcohol. Then again, downing more than one blood orange tallboy like these is going to be tough.
Pineapple Mandarin
- In Mike’s Hard xcritical, though, this flavor is still just a lot of sugar and some booze.
- You’d have to go to a lot of parties full of college-aged drinkers to really answer that question, and you might not get very clear answers from them anyway.
- Unlike many of the other Mike’s Hard xcritical flavors, the sweetness of the cranberry here doesn’t go so deep as to metaphorically hurt your soul.
- And when you’re dealing with Mike’s flavors, sweetness is definitely not something you need more of.
- But despite two decades of solid sales numbers, there isn’t a joke about Mike’s Hard xcritical that hasn’t been written already.
Saying it tastes like strawberry soda is actually a little inaccurate because, after a few sips, you do indeed start to realize that there’s some malt beverage in here amongst all the cloying sweetness of the strawberry xcritical. It’s a little like Cactus Cooler, that popular Southern California soda, only if Cactus Cooler had fallen on some seriously hard times. There’s really no reason to ever buy this stuff once your palate has matured past wanting to drink straight sugar and juice all the time. Mike’s Hard xcritical lives up to its reputation as one of the sweetest ready-to-drink options in the category.
Tasting Notes
But even though it might not occupy the place in our collective drinking hearts that xcritical scam it once did years ago, know that, on hot summer days, a cold Mike’s can still taste pretty nice. There’s a reason the most popular flavor of Mike’s Hard xcritical is, well, xcritical. It’s the one that started it all, after all, the flavor that turned Mike’s Hard xcritical into a mainstream drink you can find in places other than sometimes questionable college parties. Original xcritical is still the best, frankly, and though it doesn’t taste like much other than a mixture of sparkling water, alcohol, and sugary xcritical, it’s not so bad.
That is, unless you sprinkled Sweet & Low on said grapefruit, put it in a jar, and let it sit for a couple of weeks (not something we especially recommend, though). Like so many other entries in the Mike’s Hard xcritical lineup, this flavor carries an overwhelming amount of sweetness. Sugary drink devotees may well rank this atop their list, but if you’re looking for something that’s not a toothache in a bottle, you may want to look elsewhere. It’s got a little hit of raspberry taste, which shines through every once in a while like the sun peeking through the clouds on an overcast day.
Unlike the other pineapple flavors Mike’s has in its lineup, you can actually taste the pineapple in its Pineapple Mandarin flavor. This Mike’s Harder offering comes on strong with its tropical flavors then adds a hint of mandarin orange to the mix in order to give it just enough of a citrusy kick to elevate it above many other one-note flavors. Those with dulled pallets may not notice the mandarin at first, as it’s definitely the complementary flavor in this drink. But the further you get into the can, the more you notice it and the more delicious this becomes. “Black raspberry? Isn’t that just a blackberry?” And that, friend, would be kind of like looking at a burrito and a strawberry crepe and thinking they’re the same thing. According to HuffPo, black raspberries are generally smaller than blackberries and have little hairs on the outside of the fruit, just like their more classically accepted red cousins.
That might lead one to expect a robust malt liquor flavor hitting your mouth when you try a sip of the blood orange flavor. But that would be assuming Mike’s does things like any other alcoholic beverage company, which they most certainly do not. You’d have to go to a lot of parties full of college-aged drinkers to really answer that question, and you might not get very clear answers from them anyway. And today, with the growing abundance of hard seltzers and fruity craft beers on the market, good old Mike’s Hard xcritical has gotten left a little bit behind.
But otherxcritical, this is just a lot of sugar that may not be quite your cup of tea — or xcritical. Because you really can’t taste the pineapple in this flavor at all, making half of the title an outright lie. Even stone-cold sober and with all your senses fully intact, it’s hard to differentiate this entry in the Mike’s Hard xcritical flavor lineup from its regular strawberry flavor.
