A tea brewed by a beer company, and a name that lasted a year.

Twisted Tea is a hard iced tea made by The Boston Beer Company, the Boston brewer best known for Samuel Adams. English Wikipedia says the company was founded in 1984 by Jim Koch and Rhonda Kallman; the company’s own timeline says Koch began from his great-great-grandfather’s lager recipe, found in the family’s attic near Cincinnati. Its leadership page names Koch, today, as chief executive officer as well as brewer and founder.

The tea did not start under its present name. In November 2000, ABC News reported on “BoDean’s Twisted Tea,” a drink from the maker of Samuel Adams, and on a lawsuit filed that week by the Milwaukee rock band the BoDeans, who had performed under that name for sixteen years. According to ABC News, the band had let the launch pass, but objected to a newspaper advertisement in Milwaukee that summer which used guitars and mentioned the band’s Summerfest show; the singer Kurt Neumann told the network that the band did not endorse the drink and that “it shouldn’t look that way.” The company, he said, maintained that it had not infringed anything.

Where the name came from is told in Koch’s 2016 book Quench Your Own Thirst. As summarised by Good Beer Hunting in March 2022, Koch writes that the drink was named after two employees, Bo and Dean. The company’s own history page puts the outcome briefly: Twisted Tea was “originally called ‘BoDeans Twisted Tea’ when it first launched,” and the company “dropped the ‘BoDeans’ back in ’01.” English Wikipedia, citing the Milwaukee Business Journal of September 2001, says Boston Beer agreed that year to stop registering and marketing the BoDean’s name. Since 2001 the drink has been sold simply as Twisted Tea.

The company dates the brand’s start to 2001, the year of the new name, while the press coverage shows the BoDean’s version on sale in 2000. Both dates belong to the same product: one is its first sale, the other its first year as Twisted Tea.

Brewed tea in a brewer’s tanks.

The idea grew out of tea the company was already making for someone else. Good Beer Hunting, drawing on Koch’s book, reported in 2022 that while Twisted Tea was in development Boston Beer was contract-brewing Tradewinds, a non-alcoholic iced tea, at its Cincinnati brewery, and that brewing tea in the same tanks as beer made logistical sense. Boston Beer bought that Cincinnati brewery, the former Hudepohl-Schoenling plant, in 1997, according to both the company and English Wikipedia; it later added a brewery in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania, which the company dates to 2008 and English Wikipedia to 2007.

The brand describes itself in a handful of fixed phrases. Its website calls Twisted Tea “The Original Hard Iced Tea” and says it is “made with real brewed tea and a 5% kick of alcohol”; Boston Beer’s own timeline speaks of “real brewed tea with a kick.” English Wikipedia describes it as a malt beverage, and the website’s homepage closes on the line “Keep It Twisted.”

The range has widened from one flavour to many. Good Beer Hunting listed the Party Pack — Original, Half & Half, Peach and Raspberry together in a twelve-can box — alongside a lighter version. The brand director, Erica Taylor, told the magazine that the single 24-ounce can did well in gas-station convenience stores. Today the website also lists an Extreme line, including Extreme Lemon, alongside the Original and the Party Pack.

Koch’s first guess about the drinker was only partly right. Good Beer Hunting quoted his book: “We targeted [Twisted Tea] at more rural drinkers, the kind of people who drank Jack Daniel’s.” Taylor told the magazine that the tea first did well in rural New England states such as New Hampshire and Maine, before spreading state by state.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all ready-to-drink names: Vizzy, Smirnoff Ice, Bacardi Breezer, Cutwater, Kirin Hyoketsu, Mike’s Hard Lemonade and Twisted Tea. Several of them come from companies better known for beer or wine. The Boston Beer Company, maker of Samuel Adams, first sold its hard iced tea in 2000 as BoDean’s Twisted Tea and renamed it Twisted Tea in 2001, the company says; Molson Coors launched Vizzy nationally in the United States in April 2020. Kirin Brewery launched Hyoketsu in Japan in 2001, according to a Kirin release of April 2016. Mike’s Hard Lemonade comes from the family-owned Mark Anthony group founded by Anthony von Mandl, which says it began in 1972 as a one-person wine importer.

Others sit inside spirits houses or were bought by one. Smirnoff Ice belongs to Diageo, and English Wikipedia notes that in the United States it is a malt beverage, while in many other markets it is made with Smirnoff vodka. Bacardi Breezer, which English Wikipedia describes as a premix of Bacardi rum, was launched in Britain in 1993, the same article says, citing the BBC. Cutwater was founded in San Diego in 2016 by former Ballast Point executives, FoodBev reported, and in February 2019 The Whiskey Wash reported its purchase by Anheuser-Busch.

A ready-to-drink brand’s identity is carried largely by a can, a name and a flavour list, and the same name can cover different recipes in different countries. Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — who launched it, who owns it now and how its packs have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A back label that belongs to the drinkers.

Twisted Tea’s most distinctive design device is not on the front of the can. For years the brand has invited drinkers to send in photographs to be printed on the back label. Taylor told Good Beer Hunting in 2022 that the practice had run for roughly fifteen years and called it “tagged photos before there were tagged photos.” The website still asks, “Want to be on the back of a Twisted Tea can?” and says its favourite part of its cans, bottles and packaging is “showing off the fans that keep us going.”

The brand’s sponsorships follow the same fans. Good Beer Hunting listed the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, the Esports Awards, college-football tailgates and country-music festivals, and reported that the events team chose partners from drinkers’ own hobbies. In December 2020 Cycle News reported that Suzuki had named the Twisted Tea/H.E.P. Motorsports Suzuki Racing Team as its premier 450-class Supercross team for 2021. In 2021, Boston Beer says, it worked with Beam Suntory on a Twisted Tea Whiskey, one of several crossovers that also included a Truly vodka. The website runs in English and Spanish and has a separate route for Canada; its legal line names the Twisted Tea Brewing Company of Boston.

Twisted Tea sits in Boston Beer’s portfolio next to Angry Orchard, the cider the company launched in 2012, and Truly, the hard seltzer it launched in 2016 as “Truly Spiked & Sparkling,” the company says.

For a design guide, Twisted Tea shows how a brand can let its drinkers fill part of the pack, and how a name can be cut down to its second half and carry on. Compare Truly, its stablemate, and Mike’s Hard Lemonade, another American flavoured malt drink. For this guide we use navy, brewed-tea amber and lemon with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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