Beer replacement of the Week: HOP WTR kinda rules, if we're being honest

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 (or food) that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey.

I wasn’t interested in hop water. Don’t get me wrong; as a 40 year old stereotype who writes about beer, I love pale ales. But hops and carbonated water, together without malt or alcohol? That sounded like a bitter voyage to a pointless land far away.

My one friend who swears by it drinks Lagunitas’ Hoppy Refresher, which introduced the beverage to my radar. But he also eats at McDonald’s four times a week, so he’s also not exactly trustworthy in that arena. So yes, I went hop-less, instead opting for non-alcoholic beers when I wanted a drink, but none of the negative effects that came with it.

While Athletic Brewing has filled that niche, it does leave room for improvement. Mainly, their booze-less brews are lower calorie than their real thing counterpart, but still clock in between 45 and 90 calories per can. And since my metabolism stinks (see above), cutting back on that seemed like a good idea.

Enter, HOP WTR’s mix-pack of, uh, hop water. HOP WTR offers flavors beyond piney hops in standard hard seltzer flavors; lime, mango and blood orange. Huh, OK, the last one’s a little unusual, but still. The question now is whether these zero calorie cans can be the beer replacement I’m looking for, or if they’ll just taste like someone turned a pine forest into a case of La Croix.