Brooklyn is getting a hard seltzer festival, because of course

By Jake Samieske

Call Becky, charge your vape, unpack your musty memes and get Truly ready to Claw. Just in time for summer 2019, Seltzer Land is coming to Brooklyn this August.

For $42 (and, maybe, a fake ID), you too can gain all the access you can swallow to Brooklyn’s own hard seltzer festival at the Expo Center this August 7. With more than 100 national and local seltzers, including White Claw, Press, Coors Seltzer, Vizzy, Mamitas, and more, Seltzer Land is set to arrive, with brunch sponsored by Hormel, because beans.

This is not a drill! Seltzer Land promises “to give hard seltzer fans the opportunity to sample new flavors in the most fun way possible.” New York-based event marketing company Cannonball Productions CEO Kate Levenstein tells Time Out, adding that “Seltzer Land is a can’t miss experience.”

Cities on the 2021 Seltzer Land “tour” include Chicago, Washington, D.C., Boston (obviously), Denver and … Columbus, Ohio.

The event was originally planned for the Expo Center last May, for just $29 general admission, but we all know what happened next. Hard seltzers were of course a massive phenomenon the summer before the pandemic, in part due to the alcohol-to-calorie ratio of the drinks: 2019 actually saw stocks of White Claw run out. By early 2020 the market had reached a staggering $2.5 billion, prompting major brewers like Bud Light and Coors to get in on the fad with their own offerings.

Things haven’t slowed down, either. In 2019, the alcoholic beverage analysts at industry group IWSR predicted hard seltzer sales in the US would more than triple to 281 million nine-liter cases by 2023. Thanks in large part to spikes in drinking during the pandemic, the industry is poised to hit that mark two years early, according to the trade publication The Spirits Business. Bottoms up, bro.