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 that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey.
As someone with Rhode Island roots, I’m moderately invested in New England’s vibrant and occasionally ridiculous brewing scene. A region with its own IPA style that’s become a worldwide hit — seriously, every microbrewery in Denmark and Sweden seems to have its own NEIPA lurking and they’re all very close to getting it right — is a microcosm of the brewing landscape unto itself.
One of the landmarks on that horizon for the past decade has been Two Roads, a Connecticut-based brewer who has existed inside the fridges of my back-home beer snob friends for roughly the past decade (at least when they didn’t feel like dropping $27 for a four pack at Trillium). The Stratford brewery made an immediate impact in the region and grew into a reliable mid-tier company with good beers at a reasonable price. This is all I want in the world, so they became a staple of my trips back to the Ocean State.
But it’s been a while since I’ve been home to my land of hot weiners, baffling indignation and the interchangeable use of the words “kiiiiiiid” and “guy” like an old telegram would use “stop.” Was Two Roads still a heavy hitter? Would its foray into canned cocktails sap its efficacy in the beer world? I ordered a sampler; let’s find out.
Jackpot Juice Hazy IPA: B
Connecticut’s lasting contribution to Rhode Islanders has been as a place for our collective grandmothers to play penny slots and earn enough reward points for a meal at one of the sadder Hard Rock Cafes in existence. Similar to how New Hampshire exists for those grandmothers to pick up plastic handles of off-brand scotch tax-free. So it makes sense a brewery within the Nutmeg State would pair up with Mohegan Sun casino for a brew.
Hazy IPAs have been a sustained hotness for a few years now — though they may be getting muscled out by higher-ABV double IPAs in the craft-adjacent game. Regardless, there are few regions I’d trust more to get the style right than the northeast, where New England beer dorks have become borderline insufferable while making $22 four-packs a viable enterprise.
Jackpot Juice pours prettily with a half inch head that slowly dissipates. It doesn’t smell especially hazy; there are some soft hops off the top but not much in the way of the fruit you’d expect. The first sip flips that a bit. There’s no conic, piney bitterness involved but there’s some citrus that waffles between sweet and sour and leaves me stuck trying to figure things out.
It’s like it goes right up to the hallway marked “HAZY” and then stops at the threshold. It starts off like you’d expect, then finishes dry instead of juicy. It’s unexpected but … it’s not bad. That collaboration with Mohegan Sun is an interesting mash-up but maybe that’s the secret ingredient? Sad retirees playing slots? An on-site WNBA franchise? A bunch of steakhouses I have been entirely too drunk to appreciate?
Hmm, OK, that one got away from me there. Still. I don’t all-the-way love it but I like it. It’s easy to drink and balanced. Uniquely balanced.
Summer Heaven Tropical IPA: D
Like the Jackpot Juice hazy, this pours with a lasting half-inch of foam on top of a darker-bodied beer. It smells like, honestly, nothing at all. Dig deep and you might get a little fruit.
My first sip … oh no. I think this can has gone bad. The best before date is September 23, 2023 and I’m drinking it a full two months before that deadline. So I guess I *hope* it went bad, because otherwise this is a massive misfire from Two Roads. It’s supposed to be a fruited IPA but all I’m getting is staleness and a bitter finish. Not in a fun, hops way but in a “this is what all those Old Milwaukee commercials were talking about in the 90s” way.
There’s a little fruit in there, but otherwise this is a waste. I’ve got a few breweries near me that are pretty notoriously lax on quality control. This tastes like one of theirs.
Daybreaker Tropical Punch: A-
Per the label, this is only canned at Two Roads, but it made the cut for the brewery sampler anyway — and hey, it’s summer, makes sense. It pours like a lightly carbonated orange juice and smells like the same, with maybe a little passion fruit or guava (oops, it’s mango) thrown in.
It tastes … just like lightly carbonated juice. The can says there are two shots of vodka in each can, but I’m looking for it and I’ve got nothing. There’s a tiny amount of fizz and the standard tartness of tropical fruits, but any boozy content is sufficiently layered underneath a whole bunch of juice. It’s rich and not too bubbly.
It won’t supplant seltzers as a low calorie option or anything, but it’s worth the extra few laps. It’s a canned cocktail that you could pour over ice into a highball glass and actually feel like someone took the effort to make. It’s great.
Nightshaker Espresso Martini: B
It pours black as night and smells like coffee which, fair play. The coffee is light and the booze is eminent. At 12 percent ABV it’s nearly twice as potent as the tropical punch and you can tell. This is a sipper, which makes sense since it is a martini after all.
That said, it’s very smooth and it’s a canvas for additions. You could toss a little cream in there, vanilla, cinnamon, whatever. This isn’t really a grab and go cocktail as much as it is a starter kit. There’s a great base in here that you can make your own however you take your coffee. I’m not sure an espresso martini is ever gonna be my thing, but I appreciate the world of possibilities this opens up.
Some morning — some morning soon — I’m gonna wake up a little hungover with a fantasy draft to be done later in the day in a house of fellow cranky dads and a lingering cloud of Marlboro reds. And this martini will be my deliverance. While I get mocked incessantly for drinking an espresso martini.
Would I drink it instead of a Hamm's?
This 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 Two Roads’ offerings over a cold can of Hamm’s?
The Jackpot Juice is a maybe — it’ll probably depend on how I’m feeling. The Summer Heaven is a no for now, just because the can I got was unsalvagable. The mixed drinks were a beast unto themselves, and the tropical punch is a quick yes while the espresso martini is probably too strong to be a casual sipper for me. That’s a little surprising; I came into this review with high hopes for Two Roads’ beer and general indifference to the cocktails canned there, yet the latter category had the most positive impact. Neat.
