Hard Seltzer - Tier List

Recently, hard seltzers have dethroned beer as the drink of choice for parties. They can be good and I believe more well received on average, due to taste and lower caloric content, being mainly just water, vodka, and flavouring. So here I go, casting my opinion _nobody asked for_ into the great ether 🎣 The results were gathered at a house party hosted by my friend @yelli_r on `Aug 28, 2021` and it was all around good vibes. It was refreshing as well because unlike the [[Beer - Tier List]] night, most of the flavours were __not__ the classics, e.g. Whiteclaw. Here are my conclusions, based purely on taste 😋 | Tier | Seltzers | | | | | | -------------------------------------- | -------------------------- | ------------------------------------- | -------------------------- | ---------------------------- | --------------------------- | | S | Alani Mimosa | Smirnoff Ice Smash Red, White & Berry | | | | | A | Alani Peach, Please | Truly Strawberry Lemonade | Alani Hawaiian Shaved Iced | Seven Peaks Raspberry Cosmo | Sun Smash Prickly Pear Lime | | B | Seven Peaks Tropical Smash | Waveline Huckleberry | Suzie's Moscow Mule | Quirk Pear + Yuzu | | | C | Quirk Hibiscus Lemonade | Barefoot Peach & Nectarine | Day Fade Black Cherry | Quirk Watermelon Salt & Lime | | | D | Cacti Lime Agave | Green House Cucumber Basil | | | | _`S` is the best, each column is also ordered by how much I like. i.e. `Waveline Huckleberry > Quirk Pear Yuzu`._\ _To view this table as an image that I made on [Tier Maker](https://tiermaker.com/) the night of [click here](/assets/img/seltzer/tier-list.png)_ ## Party Consensus Now! I don't only have my own rankings for the seltzers. Everyone was writing down their scores on _the same piece of paper_ using a scale of `1 to 5`, although some had a more creative scoring strategy, looking at you Alston! 😂 At some point in the party, I snapped pictures of these data sheets and afterwards created [this spreadsheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rDYv6z14gQ1laChSA4lb2-2mEe80GlFofBDI3A7q2tI/edit?usp=sharing). Unfortunately, it probably wasn't at the end of the party so it may have been updated afterwards and also the photo chopped off some rows of scores... but hey, can you blame a guy who's had a 17 drink medley in the name of science?! At least I have my own answers for every seltzer, does that speak more to my completionist attitude or drinking aptitude, I'll let you decide ⚖ Note: I clamped all scores between 0 and 5, leaving the original as a comment on the cell Time to crunch the numbies and draw some interesting conclusions 🤓 Here's how the seltzers rank by `Average Score`. Keep in mind that flavours were not scored by equal amounts of people, those with less than a few `Samples` should be taken with a grain of salt. Finally, the `Std Dev` can be used to gauge how polarizing a seltzer is among our boozers, lower value means people generally agree on the average, whereas a higher value indicates disagreement. ![Table of seltzers and scores](/assets/img/seltzer/table.png) Some insights we can gather from this table - `Truly Strawberry Lemonade` and `Smirnoff Smash Red, White & Berry` both score around 4 stars with 9 samples each. Humans love glucose 🍬 - Everyone agrees that `Day Fade Black Cherry` should be discontinued immediately. It scored lowest, by 12 people, and also had the smallest `Std Dev`. - `Green House Cucumber Basil` is very polarizing, with 6 scores, half were 1 star or less, and half were 4 stars or more, nothing between. ## Post Script I still think that a [banana flavoured hard seltzer](https://twitter.com/micmax_/status/1427701283838853120) would be an absolute slam dunk and am disappointed no one's crafted it thus far, that isn't the [NELK Boys](https://www.seltzernation.com/happy-dad-hard-seltzer-releases-new-limited-edition-banana-flavor-with-an-nft-twist/). Something I'd also like to calculate is how far away from the `Std Dev` on average each person's scores are. Let me know if you are a Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel wizard and can share with me the function for this metric 🔮 Looking forward to the next tasting and tier list creation! Ciders perhaps? 🍎 September 27, 2022