For nearly the last decade, the alcohol market has seen a new player take over. Before, people were crushing beers at parties or taking shots of some standard liquor. Now, we have all different types of drinks. People are...
For nearly the last decade, the alcohol market has seen a new player take over. Before, people were crushing beers at parties or taking shots of some standard liquor. Now, we have all different types of drinks. People are drinking hard seltzers, hard ciders, hard this, or hard that. One of the more popular drinks is Twisted Tea.
But, what is Twisted Tea? What kind of alcohol is in twisted tea? What are the nutritional facts? We’ll cover all of this, and all the different flavors of Twisted Tea available as well.
Twisted Tea Overview
Twisted Tea is a hard iced tea, owned and produced by the Boston Beer Co that first hit the market in 2001 out of Cincinnati, OH. It contains 5% alcohol (with the exception of their light version, which is 4%), and uses real tea leaves.
Already we see that TT is very beer like. It’s 5% alcohol with a 4% light option – much like Coors and Coors Light, or any other domestic beer.
You can find Twisted Tea at nearly every liquor store, grocery store, or gas station across the country. Any place that sells alcohol is likely to have TT available. There are many flavors to choose from, and they even offer a Sweet Tea Whiskey.
Twisted Tea Flavors
There are 11 different Twisted Tea Hard Iced Tea flavors to choose from. To prevent boring you with details about each and every one, we simply added some notes to the side of a few. We hope you know the difference between raspberry and mango.
Twisted Tea Original Half & Half (tea and lemonade) Light (4% abv) Raspberry Peach Blackberry Mango Blueberry Pineapple Sweet Cherry Lime (limited to New England area) MangonadaWhat Kind of Alcohol is Twisted Tea?
We often think of Twisted Tea and hard seltzers as vodka drinks. I mean, if you are to make a hard iced tea at home, you’re probably just going to add vodka to tea. But that’s not how TT is made. That would be something more along the lines of a canned cocktail.
Twisted Tea is essentially a beer that uses tea leaves instead of hops. Malted barley is fermented to add alcohol, then tea leaves are added to create the tea flavor. They add some “natural flavoring”, as well.
A normal, typical beer uses malted barley as the base grain and adds hops after fermentation. TT adds tea leaves instead.
Nutritional Info
As we mentioned, there are 11 flavors of TT, each of which may have some variance in its nutritional info. So, we’re just going to cover the facts of their Original and Light options.
Twisted Tea Original Nutrition
Calories: 194 Carbs: 26g Sugar: 23g Caffeine: 30mg ABV: 5%Twisted Tea Light
Calories: 110 Carbs: 9g Sugar: 6g Caffeine: 30mg ABV: 4%TT has similar a similar calorie breakdown as your typical domestic beer. There’s extra sugar present, so slightly higher calories.
The big thing to note here is that Twisted Tea does have about 30mg of caffeine per 12 oz. They use real tea leaves in production, so there is caffeine. A typical cup of coffee has about 100 mg of caffeine.
Is Twisted Tea Gluten-Free?
No, it’s just like a beer, so it is not gluten free. Alcohol that goes through distillation, without any additives, is gluten free. TT just goes through fermentation and uses malted barley, so it contains gluten.
How Many Twisted Tea’s to get Drunk?
There are many factors that go into how fast you get drunk. Barrel & Brew touches on some of these in their post about how many shots it takes to get drunk.
Twisted Tea contains 5% ABV. That’s the same as Budweiser, Coors Banquet or Original, Heineken, and many others. Bud Light, Natty, Busch Light, and other light beers usually contain around 4-4.2% ABV. So, if you know how many beers get you drunk, then you know how many TT’s it takes to get drunk.
You can also compare it to shots. A standard 1.5oz shot of 40% alcohol contains the same amount of alcohol as a 12 oz drink with 5% ABV, so 1 TT = 1 shot.
If you don’t know your limits, I can give you some generic numbers.
A smaller female may be drunk after consuming 2 or 3 Twea’s.
It may take a larger man 5-7 Twea’s to get drunk. These things depend heavily on your tolerance levels.
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