The Untold Truth Of Twisted Tea

Twisted Tea is, for quite a few people, no less than the drink of the summer, It's quite possibly the world's favorite alcoholic tea and a beverage for the undeniably twisted. Little is known about how the popular beverage came to be, but one thing is for certain: it has been well-known and loved for a full two decades by tea lovers alike. 

After all, tea is the world's most consumed beverage (not counting water), as National Geographic reports, with an estimated six billion cups of the stuff consumed worldwide in a day. It's no wonder so many of us were excited when alcohol was added to the mix and then delivered to us in a convenient bottle and can form. So, what's the story behind the beverage that brought two of our favorites together? Where did all of the memes come from? And who started it all? Keep on reading to learn more about the untold truth of Twisted Tea. 

You may first be wondering who, exactly, is behind the Twisted Tea moniker. Turns out, it's owned by the Boston Beer Company, who also happen to be the guys who created many of our other favorite beverages, including Samuel Adams Boston Lager, Truly Hard Seltzer, Angry Orchard hard cider, and more. Founded in 1984, the company began with its first brand, the now ubiquitous Samuel Adams Boston Lager. Six weeks later the beverage took its place as "The Best Beer in America" in The Great American Beer Festival's Consumer Preference Poll, according to the Boston Beer Company website. 

Twisted Tea came along later in the company's success, with a 2001 debut. Since the Boston Beer Company's opening, it has paved the way for other companies to follow with its successful branding and partnerships, too. More recently, Boston Beer has teamed with PepsiCo to give the fan-favorite beverage Mountain Dew a boozy treatment that will hit shelves in early 2022, says USA Today.

To make its combination of tea and alcohol even better, Twisted Tea offers nine different flavors, so that every fan can have just the taste they like. These include offerings such as Half & Half, Slightly Sweet, Blueberry, Light, Peach, Mango, Blackberry, Raspberry, and, of course, the ever-present Original. Last summer, the brand also offered some new flavors in the form of Black Cherry and Passion Fruit, according to Delish. 

For those who really want to step things up a notch and enjoy all the Twisted Tea that they can, fans can also purchase the Twisted Tea Bag N' Box, a five-liter cardboard keg full of the brand's Original flavor. As the labeling says, it's "Like a box of wine. (But way better.)"

The brand's Original flavor tastes quite a lot like iced tea with a natural lemon flavor, according to the Twisted Tea official website. All varieties are bottled at 5% alcohol by volume and come in multiple packaging options, such as a six to 18 pack of 12oz cans, as well as a 24oz can, five-liter Bag N' Box, and the 10-liter Bag N' Box.  

Twisted Tea does its best to accommodate everyone by keeping its drinks allergen-free. It's also brewed with real tea leaves, natural flavorings, and a malt base derived from beer, according to the Twisted Tea FAQ page. Of course, given that beer-based malt and the fact that it uses brewed tea leaves, Twisted Tea is definitely not gluten or caffeine-free. That said, it doesn't contain any ingredients containing milk, fish, crustaceans, tree nuts, peanuts, or soy.

With approximately 1.1% of the general population affected by a peanut or tree nut allergy, according to a study published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, that's a pretty big deal. Furthermore, given that approximately 79 million people in the world are eating a vegan diet (per The Vou), Twisted Tea's lack of animal products is also undoubtedly attractive for many imbibers, too. The brand is ultimately allowing most to enjoy it beside the pool on a hot summer day by keeping allergens and dietary complications fairly minimal. 

The brand shows its fan appreciation not only by keeping its beverage largely free of allergens but also by putting the faces of those same fans right on the cans. That's right: your face can be plastered on a cold can of Twisted Tea. As part of that process, the brand looks for the most creative and "twisted" photos to display on the back label of its cans, according to its official website. 

With categories such as food, sports, DIY, and the great outdoors, there are endless possibilities as to what you could submit and have shown off on the side of a can. Of course, there are rules to the submission. Drinkers depicted in the photo must be at least 25 years old, while any photo submitted must not depict anyone actually drinking. And of course, Twisted Tea won't cotton to any displays of drunk driving, sexually explicit content, or any illegal activity. Quite a few other rules follow that can be found here if you're interested in submitting a photo and showing off your love for Twisted Tea yourself. 

The brand is also currently running a "TeaDrop" contest, wherein fans can win a year's supply of the beverage, as well as Twisted Tea summer merch.

The Twisted Tea brand has had its downfalls, of course, with its earliest being involved in a lawsuit over its name back in November 2000. Before the Twisted Tea we all know and love was launched, it went by the name "BoDean's Twisted Tea," a nod to rock music group The BoDeans. Unfortunately, the band didn't appreciate the brand making money off of its name, especially given that no one had apparently asked the band members about a collaboration or paid them in any way, according to the Milwaukee Business Journal. 

When the company took out an ad for the beverage featuring info about the band's summer festival, per ABC News, they didn't take it too lightly, alleging trademark infringement. This all led to a rather long legal battle between the band and the Boston Beer Company over the matter of that name.

"It's one thing to have a common name, but to represent us and lead people to believe that [we endorse the beer], that's too much. We don't endorse it, and it shouldn't look that way," singer-guitarist Kurt Neumann told ABC News. Eventually,  after an almost year-long battle, the company agreed to stop selling the product under the BoDean's name and dropped it down to Twisted Tea. 

Twisted Tea gained more popularity when one particular video went viral in late 2020. In the clip in question, according to VinePair, a man named Barry Allen is seen getting involved in a verbal altercation with an intoxicated man in a Ohio convenience store. The man repeatedly hurled racial slurs at Allen, who is Black, and also threatened Allen's family members and asked invasive questions. 

The guy made it very clear in the video that he wasn't going to stop, so Allen took things into his own hands — literally. He picked up a 22-ounce can of Twisted Tea and smacked the man right across the face, hard enough to make the can explode. This led to a physical fight, while the video itself led to a variety of memes about Twisted Tea as a weapon of choice. It also garnered some celebrity treatment for Allen, at least on some social media platforms and news sites. 

"I called my wife as soon as I got in the car, and I told her I hit a guy in the face with a can, and she's like, 'I know, I'm watching it,'" Allen told the podcast "Mark One Sports." After the incident, Allen was nicknamed "Mr. TeaKO" by the internet, as well as the Twisted Tea Guy, and has since used his platform to speak out about racism like what he experienced in the original TeaKO incident.

Although it didn't choose to sponsor Mr. TeaKO himself (per Popculture), Twisted Tea does have a few deals with other brands and teams under its belt. Namely, NASCAR. In 2021, the brand geared up to sponsor the 59th annual World Series of Racing at Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park on October 9th, according to RaceDayCT. 

Additionally, back in 2017, Twisted Tea and racer Ty Dillon, along with Germain Racing and Richard Childress Racing (RCR), entered into a long-term agreement to sponsor the number 13 car, a Chevrolet SS (via \). Twisted Tea served as the sponsor for select races during the 2017 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series.

"We've been involved with NASCAR for a few years, and we know that Richard Childress Racing, Germain Racing and Ty Dillon are the best of the best, and we couldn't ask for a better team to race with," Senior Director, Head of Marketing Michelle Sullivan told NASCAR at the time. "Our team members and Twisted Tea drinkers are fiercely loyal NASCAR fans, and we wanted to partner with a team and driver who share the same commitment to a captivating race day — whether it be on the actual race track or with a twisted tailgate featuring Twisted Tea."

Twisted Tea also sponsors the popular gaming competitors and streamers known as 100 Thieves in a multi-year deal taken up alongside the Boston Beer Company's Truly Hard Seltzer brand, according to The Esports Observer. With the deal, Twisted Tea will get to do all sorts of fun stuff with the gaming brand, including sponsoring a cooking show and live streams with 100 Thieves' Jack "CouRage" Dunlop. Truly, for its part, is set to sponsor 100 Thieves founder Matthew Haag's golf-related ventures as part of the deal.

"I'm truly excited about this partnership with Truly and Twisted Tea," 100 Thieves Founder and CEO Matthew Haag told Esports Insider at the time of the announcement in March 2021. "We're big hard seltzer and hard iced tea fans over here at 100 Thieves, and I'm also a big fan of anything that gets me on the golf course for work!"

In 2021, Twisted Tea gave out $25,000 for National Tattoo Day to "loyal and wild" fans who were so dedicated, they got the brand tattooed on them, according to Rochester First.com. Twisted Tea is set to pick out 25 winners up through September 15. 

As the brand has received an increasing number of submissions for the contest, it has noticed one theme that has stood out from the rest: a combination of Twisted Tea and the sunglasses brand Pit Viper. "After an unavoidable amount of tattoo images featuring Twisted Tea cans sporting Pit Vipers made their way into our inbox, we decided it was time to have a meeting of the minds," Pit Viper marketing director Spencer Harkins said, per Unofficial Networks.

This "meeting of the minds" led to a collaboration between motorsport competitor Travis Pastrana and the brand, which released an exclusive "Bag N' Box" filled with 168 ounces of Twisted Tea Original flavor beverages, as well as a pair of 2000s Pit Viper sunglasses branded with — what else? — the Twisted Tea name.

Despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Twisted Tea has done well in 2020, with the Boston Beer Company's stock growing over 160% (per Investment U). In fact, it has done even better than its sister brand Samuel Adams, according to Good Beer Hunting. In July 2021, Truly and Twisted Tea accounted for 84% of the total volume for Boston Beer, while the classic Sam Adams Boston Lager only made up less than 8 percent of the company's volume.

It's clear that, while many other restaurants and companies are facing serious hurdles in the face of a worldwide pandemic and economic upheaval, Twisted Tea and a few other brands are doing just fine. "Twisted Tea continues to generate double-digit volume growth rates that are significantly above full-year 2020 trends,"  Chief Executive Dave Burwick stated, according to MarketWatch. If that trend continued, Twisted Tea could very well become one of the most popular fixtures in liquor stores and cold cases everywhere.