Heineken is hoping to bridge the gap between beer and boozy bubbly waters with the release of Bask, its new IPA Style Hard Seltzer. Bask released in San Diego and Boston. With its bold new release, Heineken hopes to court craft beer purists who have been slower to adapt to hard seltzer.

“Bask is inspired by the palate and mentality of craft beers, but is intended for anyone who craves a flavorful and meaningful drinking experience,” says Ryan Webb, Heineken USA’s director of innovations. “In our initial research, we saw that only 30 percent of craft-beer drinkers consumed hard seltzers last year, providing an opportunity to deliver a new product that would bridge that gap.”

The unique new seltzer comes in Blood Orange, Lemon, and Original Hops. Each flavor contains 110 calories, 3-4 grams of sugar, and five percent ABV, a lighter profile which aligns more closely with seltzer than a traditional IPA. Bask is also gluten free, which makes it a good alternative for beer lovers who can’t consume gluten for dietary reasons.

Although it is made like a seltzer, Bask includes some very beer-like ingredients. It uses a flavored yeast as opposed to the neutral tasting ones found in most spiked and sparkling drinks. They are also dry-hopped with proprietary hop oil. Bask describes the end result as “all of the fruit forward tropical taste and no bitterness.”

“The beverage space has become pretty inundated in the last few years,” says Webb. “We believe our distributor, retail partners, and consumers don’t need just another hard seltzer. . . Our biggest opportunity was to create a lightly hopped hard seltzer that delivers IPA flavors without the fullness.”

Bask seems most geared toward fans of IPAs and other craft beers, with its distinctly hoppy taste profile. It is an interesting way to enter a segment that is increasingly stealing market share from beer.

However, Webb is right – the hard seltzer market is becoming flooded with options, yet there is nothing quite like Bask available. Wine based cocktails and spritzers are growing in popularity; Barefoot released its own wine based spritzer, and even Truly sells a popular rose’ favor.

Yet we haven’t seen anything similar done with beer – until now. Indeed, the Original Hops could be marketed as the first beer flavored hard seltzer. The Boston Globe’s Gary Dzen noted that “it smells like walking into a brewery.”

Perhaps its hoppy flavor profile will draw former beer snobs into the space and introduce more people to the possibilities of what hard seltzer can look and taste like.

A representative confirmed to Hard Seltzer News by email that the brand will only be available in the Boston and San Diego markets initially.

Erin Grafton
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