Beverage of the Week: Happy Thursday is too boring to be notable

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 see Happy Thursday a lot. Not at bars or the liquor store, really, but it turns out they bought a lot of ad time on local Milwaukee Brewers broadcasts.

I guess that makes sense. Molson Coors makes Happy Thursday, and Miller Brewing is part of that deal. So the money that would have gone toward maintaining the Miller Park name has instead been funneled to "spiked refresher" awareness and we've got a ballpark with a zombie name that will live on for decades. At least that's my reading of the situation, wrong as it is.

Anyway, I'm always down for canned cocktails and hard seltzers. Happy Thursday isn't really either; it's not a seltzer, because it has no carbonation. But it's not quite a proper canned cocktail because there's no specific spirit shouted out on the can. In fact, the ingredient list just hits you with "ALCOHOL" in the second spot. Not a ton, at 4.4 percent ABV, but you're probably not getting a premium vodka or whatever there.

Still, the flavors make sense and a bubble free seltzer-like slim can fills a void. After a college career of bringing Thursdays back, I'm happy to find out if I can still pull it off now I'm an old man. Let's see if Happy Thursday is any good.

Pineapple Starfruit: B

Let's start with the most exotic combination in the bunch. I believe this is my first time working with starfruit in any drink capacity. It smells like pineapple rings in juice right off the top, an inviting sweet, slightly tart smell that lures you in.

That holds through on the first sip. It's slightly thicker than most seltzers, feeling that way in part due to the lack of carbonation inside. Whatever meager amount of alcohol is inside -- only 4.4 percent -- is hidden behind that big flavor. The pineapple is bold but balanced by the starfruit that takes off some of the acidic edge.

That missing acidity helps with the smoothness. It leads to a sloppier finish -- not dry, not crisp. That's alright, because the drink itself isn't overly sweet or syrupy. It's a little hollow toward the end, giving way to the filtered water within. But, for the most part, this hits in a different way than your standard seltzer. The missing bubbles are part of that, sure, but this flavor stands on its own to create a soft, inviting canned cocktail that works despite that lightness.

Mango Passionfruit: C

Mango typically plays creamy in drinks like this. Passionfruit generally tends to be a little stale and rubbery. So that alone makes this an interesting, if not super appealing, combination.

The two are well balanced, though in the end a slight, old tire finish suggests the passionfruit won. It's sweet and slightly creamy up front before giving way to a generic aftertaste that makes you feel like you just finished an old Now-n-Later, albeit without the sore jaw. There's no real depth to it. It's just sorta there, tasting a little stale, until it's not.

On the plus side, it's not offensive. It's easiest to drink out of the can, and from there it goes down smoothly. It's a drink you can pick up at a tailgate or cookout, finish quickly, then forgot you ever had.

Strawberry: A-

This is interesting in its lack of, I guess, being interesting. You see a lot of strawberry variants out there, but rarely just strawberry on its own. Given the hit or miss nature of the blends Happy Thursday has already trotted out, I'm excited to roll with something a bit more basic.

On that end, Happy Thursday delivers. It promises sweet strawberry and hits that note exactly like you'd expect, crushing your tongue under the weight of sugary red fruit. Take the bubbles out of a strawberry Fanta and this is what you'd get. Like the rest of the flavors in the offering, there's no hint of alcohol, even at 4.4 percent ABV, within.

It does have a sheen of artificial flavor but mostly tastes like Splenda sprinkled on sliced fruit. This one might wear you down with that sweetness, but if not it could be dangerous. Or at least would be if not for the 4.4 percent ABV. Still: sweet. Tasty. Best flavor so far by a long shot.

Black Cherry: C

It pours a soothing lavender -- I enjoy a good artificial coloring -- and smells like off-brand soda. Off-brand only because reputable soda makers (soda...sters?) wouldn't make a black cherry. I do feel like Shasta did, however.

Anyway, you get a slight tart taste up front that quickly dissolves into something sweeter. The flavor in general is thin and lightly cough-syrupy. Drinking from the can, with mild aluminum overtones, only reinforces this.

Like the rest of the cohort it's easy to drink. Kinda a lowest common denominator addition to a pool party cooler. You can crush a few of these, though you probably wouldn't seek them out after. This doesn't taste like much, but it hits the mark of being (slightly) boozy and (relatively) low calorie, so there's that at least.

Would I drink it instead of a Hamm's?

This is a pass/fail mechanism where I compare whatever I’m drinking to my baseline cheap beer. That’s the standby from the land of sky-blue waters, Hamm’s. So the question to answer is: on a typical day, would I drink Happy Thursday over a cold can of Hamm’s?

The strawberry flavor every now and then, sure. Otherwise, this is a very generic experience. You'll be fine fishing one of these at a cookout. You just probably won't seek it out afterward.

This article originally appeared on For The Win: Beverage of the Week: Happy Thursday is too boring to be notable