Top 10 Hard Seltzer Brands (According to Untappd)
Our last post gave an overview of the hard seltzers market and included a chart that lists nutrition and cost information to help you navigate the hard seltzer aisle. Well, we took it one step further and added Untappd rankings to all 223 flavors for these 42 brands. We also expanded the 42 brands into 51 separate flavor lines that those brands put out (e.g. Truly has Truly Berry, Truly Citrus, Truly Tropical, and Truly Lemonade). The chart has been updated with all Untappd scores and rankings. Without further ado, here are the Top 10 Hard Seltzer Brands and their Untappd scores (out of 5)!
Top 10 Seltzer Brands
|
Brand Rank |
Brand |
Untappd Brand |
%ABV |
calories |
sugar (g) |
carbs (g) |
Price/12 oz can |
|
1 |
3.535 |
4.85 |
100 |
N/A* |
3.00 |
$1.78 |
|
|
2 |
3.491 |
5 |
147 |
4.00 |
4.00 |
$1.67 |
|
|
3 |
3.474 |
4 |
110 |
5.00 |
7.00 |
$1.08 |
|
|
4 |
3.471 |
5 |
100 |
2.25 |
2.25 |
$1.42 |
|
|
5 |
3.462 |
4.2 |
85 |
0.00 |
0.00 |
$1.58 |
|
|
6 |
3.443 |
4.2 |
100 |
2.00 |
N/A* |
$1.46 |
|
|
7 |
3.426 |
5 |
110 |
4.00 |
4.00 |
$1.25 |
|
|
8 |
3.416 |
4 |
80 |
0.00 |
1.00 |
$1.33 |
|
|
9 |
3.412 |
5 |
100 |
1.00 |
2.00 |
$1.29 |
|
|
10 |
3.412 |
4 |
110 |
0.10 |
9.00 |
$1.50 |
*Not available
First, what we should do is make sense of the Untappd score. It’s out of 5 but even the best brand (Brizo) only has 3.53. We can easily calculate that it’s the same as 7.06/10 or 70.6%. That’s a really bad score for the absolute best brand (probably because Untappd is a website for beer drinkers), so what we will want to do to make sense of the data is to fit it to a normal curve. This way, we will compare only the data to itself and not worry about the 5 maximum (or 0 minimum). In this way, we can quantify how much better each brand is than their competition.
First, we will see how many standard deviations the score is from the average. Another way to look at it is percentile so we can see out of a perfect score of 100. Now, we can see that Brizo score is actually 86.8%. It’s much easier to compare out of a 100 score, and we see that Brizo (86.8%) is 3.4% better than HRD WTR (83.4%). Compared to #3 Press (81.9%) vs #4 Ficks (81.6%), which only differ by 0.3% and carry essentially the same rating.
|
Brand Rank |
Brand |
Untappd Brand |
Brand Std Dev |
Brand Percentile |
|
1 |
3.535 |
1.12 |
86.80 |
|
|
2 |
3.491 |
0.97 |
83.40 |
|
|
3 |
3.474 |
0.91 |
81.91 |
|
|
4 |
3.471 |
0.90 |
81.61 |
|
|
5 |
3.462 |
0.87 |
80.82 |
|
|
6 |
3.443 |
0.81 |
78.98 |
|
|
7 |
3.426 |
0.75 |
77.28 |
|
|
8 |
3.416 |
0.71 |
76.19 |
|
|
9 |
3.412 |
0.70 |
75.79 |
|
|
10 |
3.412 |
0.70 |
75.78 |
Major Brands
That’s fun that we identified the top 10, but how did the major brands score on Untappd? Ranks and scores below:
|
Brand Rank |
Brand |
Untappd Brand |
Brand Percentile |
%ABV |
calories |
sugar (g) |
Price/12 oz can |
|
37 |
3.096 |
35.47 |
4.5 |
90 |
0.00 |
$1.42 |
|
|
43 |
2.937 |
18.12 |
5.0 |
100 |
1.00 |
$1.42 |
|
|
38 |
3.079 |
33.33 |
4.5 |
90 |
0.00 |
$1.33 |
|
|
46 |
2.837 |
10.51 |
4.2 |
88 |
0.00 |
$1.42 |
|
|
44 |
2.867 |
12.53 |
4.5 |
90 |
0.00 |
$1.42 |
|
|
36 |
3.135 |
40.53 |
5.0 |
100 |
1.00 |
$1.29 |
|
|
42 |
2.938 |
18.14 |
5.0 |
100 |
1.00 |
$1.29 |
|
|
33 |
3.165 |
44.51 |
5.0 |
100 |
1.00 |
$1.29 |
|
|
17 |
3.350 |
68.79 |
5.0 |
100 |
1.00 |
$1.29 |
|
|
29 |
3.198 |
48.90 |
5.0 |
110 |
3.00 |
$1.50 |
|
|
19 |
3.345 |
68.13 |
5.0 |
110 |
3.00 |
$1.50 |
|
|
30 |
3.192 |
48.09 |
3.7 |
70 |
0.00 |
$1.42 |
Conclusion
The best-selling brands aren’t always the best in the eyes of the consumer. A lot has to do with availability. For the small producers, it’s hard to cross state lines because it requires new licenses, logistics, and scale. The ratings are not computed to directly correlate to sales either because the average of all of the flavors was used as the brand line rating, when in reality a company may sell a lot more of one flavor so that flavor should technically have more weight on the company's rating. I have no insight into sales for each flavor so that was impossible to achieve here.
Also, I get the feeling that the Untappd scores are based solely on taste. My ratings system will take into consideration taste, alcohol quality, drunk/hangover feeling, and overall perception. The whole experience. Look for my reviews coming soon!