Welcome to FTW’s Drink of the Week series. We primarily document and review beer here, but we’re happy to expand our scope to any drink (or food) that goes well with sports. Yes, even whiskey in cookie dough.
2024 was another big year for hard tea. Lest you think we’re done, Shock Top just released their own spiked leaf beer just in time for the holidays.
Either way, since the days when twisted tea was considered revolutionary, boozy iced teas have exploded. High Noon has tea. Lover has tea. There is tea available on the surf side. Jack Daniel’s has black tea, but it’s a bit smelly. They are virtually all the same. Available in four flavors, from original to raspberry. Every once in a while, you can get some real, identifiable booze. Sometimes you get a neutral spirit that has a flatter, richer flavor.
Today we will deal with the former. The Sun Cruiser is a mashup of vodka and iced tea, which also makes me wonder why Southern Comfort doesn’t offer a blended sweet tea (which prints money). Available in four standard flavors. Regular, Arnold Palmer, Raspberry, Peach. Let’s see if it can escape the unfriendly shackles of basicness and be better than the rest.
It will rain as promised. No bubbles are visible. It’s a little lighter than a typical sweet tea, but still brown enough to make a convincing bourbon on TV. When poured, it has a sweet and slightly alcoholic aroma. There’s just a hint of the 4.5 percent alcohol by volume from the vodka, but it’s mostly Lipton brisket-style canned black tea.
The first sip leans towards freshly brewed tea. There’s a lot more depth here than other hard teas that can taste like a Crystal Light type mix or lean too far in the opposite direction and become syrupy. Instead, this one is light and crispy. The vodka only makes an appearance towards the end, but it’s not burnt and not so much that it derails each sip.
Instead, you’ll be served a crushable iced tea mix drink that isn’t too sweet. There’s little to indicate that this is a cocktail, other than a small amount of vodka/neutral spirit boiling over with each sip. You may not realize it. Part of me wants to add a shot of whiskey to the mix. But a big part of me is mature enough to understand that it’s the wrong decision on a weeknight.
wonderful. I love the great Arnold Palmer. Or in this case, John Daly. Like the original, we pour freshly brewed brown without carbonation. It smells like lemon tea.
The original offers a deep tea flavor (for a can), but the lemonade here takes it down a notch. It’s a bit sloppy, kicking out the sharpness of the plain tea and leaving a more syrupy aftertaste. Not bad, but I feel like this is more common after the first tea becomes distinguishable from other inferior teas (Jack Daniel’s, I’m looking at you).
Since the number of calories in the two cans is the same at 100, this suggests that the mixture contains artificial lemonade. Even if it lacks the refreshing taste of the original, it’s easier to drink when poured over ice. It’s a little more boring, a little more boring. But it’s still an easy, crushable tailgate drink.
It pours a little thicker than the other two cans. As for the scent…well, I know blue raspberry isn’t an actual raspberry flavor, but it smells like blue raspberry Jolly Ranchers. It’s sweet, not particularly authentic, but has enough charm to make it a problem.
The sweetness is suppressed to the front. It finally kicks in towards the end and helps with drinkability, but I feel like it’s a bit of a letdown compared to the aroma. This is also a tea that feels a little too artificial.
However, that’s not a big concern. Like the others, it’s smooth and easy to drink. Like John Daly, it’s better served over ice than out of the can. It’s a little more fiddly than the other two, but it’s still a can you can burn through in 5 minutes while playing cornhole at the tailgate. At 100 calories, it offers a solid amount of flavor that hits your gut as well as most light beers.
New flavor, same pour. It smells aggressively like a peach gummy ring. That’s not a complaint. Like Raspberry, I 1000% hate the candy taste in canned cocktails.
Unlike raspberries, the taste is distinct, with a sweet and tangy flavor that lasts from beginning to end. This weakens the taste of the tea, but makes the whole thing a real slurry that’s sweet and clean, and certainly feels like an artificial flavor (the ingredients aren’t in the can). It’s a little sloppy and dessert drink-like, but ultimately refreshing enough that those sides don’t get stale.
I wish I had saved this for the golf course because I was able to place 9 of them, gradually getting better and worse over 18 holes. Ah, that’s right. Since winter is coming, you can buy more for next year.
It’s a pass/fail mechanism that compares what I’m drinking to a baseline cheap beer. It is a standby from the land of sky blue water, the land of Ham. So, the questions to answer are: On a normal day, I’d have a cold can of ham with Suncruiser iced tea and vodka?
The original successfully clears the hurdle of canned iced tea. Otherwise, only peaches fulfill the promise of the first sip. So I would prioritize those two over Ham.