New hard tea and hard lemonade brands continue to populate shelves, while the No. 1 hard tea brand continues to grow its share, despite being more than 20 years in the game.
One constant in beverage-alcohol’s rollercoaster 2025 has been growth in the spirits-based, ready-to-drink (RTD) canned cocktail segment. Spirits and cider sales stayed broadly stable in the two-week period ending October 18, while trends for flavored malt beverages (FMB) and seltzer worsened, according to analysis of NIQ data from Goldman Sachs Equity Research.
Boston Beer’s transformation from a craft brewer to an adult beverage company, which began in earnest about a decade ago, is looking like an even better bet as traditional beer’s declines outpace those of the beyond beer segment.
Boston Beer Company’s third-quarter shipments (sales to wholesalers) and depletions (sales to retailers) declined 13.7% and 3%, respectively, the company shared today.
If you thought Skimmers, Anheuser-Busch InBev’s (A-B) entrant into the vodka-based tea segment, looked a bit too similar to the space’s lead brand Surfside, you’re not alone. Philadelphia-based Stateside Brands LLC, the parent company of Surfside hard tea and lemonade, filed a complaint against A-B in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on Tuesday.
Ben Weiss, the creator of Bai Tea, has brewed up another attempt at boozy tea.
Hard tea is all the rage right now, but one ready-to-drink (RTD) company has been championing the style since 2013.
Hard tea continued to fill Boston Beer’s sails in Q2, but it was newbie Sun Cruiser that put in the brunt of the work rather than veteran Twisted Tea, company leadership shared Thursday during a call with investors and analysts.
Half a decade after wading into distilling, Massachusetts-based Trillium Brewing is diving into the ready-to-drink (RTD) canned cocktail segment.
Beverage-alcohol’s embrace of flavor and craft beer’s shifting distribution trends were among spotlighted issues during last week’s Beer Marketer’s Insights Spring Conference in Chicago. Leaders from BeatBox Beverages, Boston Beer Company, Atomic Brands, Columbia Distributing and Anheuser-Busch InBev (A-B) shared where their business and the beer category is heading. Here are a few soundbites from the conference.
Twisted Tea has been a positive outlier for Boston Beer Company in recent years, posting consistent growth for the company and combating declines from its sibling brands, including Truly Hard Seltzer. However, it is now Boston Beer’s spirits-based hard tea, Sun Cruiser, that is pulling the weight.
The first quarter of 2025 was rocky for the beer industry, as National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA) chief economist and VP of analytics Lester Jones reported last week. Brewbound’s coverage of Jones’ presentation of quarterly data from bev-alc invoice tech platform Fintech continues with a deeper dive into craft, hard tea and non-alcoholic (NA) beer…. Read more »
The hard tea segment operates similarly to soda, with one or two leading national players, and a handful of regional winners. With that analogy, and Boston Beer Company’s Twisted Tea equating to a Coke or Pepsi, California-based hard tea maker Jiant believes it can be hard tea’s Olipop – a flavor-forward, ingredient-focused functional brand that connects with new and lapsed consumers.
After ending fiscal year 2024 (FY24) with single-digit volume declines, Boston Beer is planning to dial in on key innovation items and support its portfolio with increased advertising in 2025.
Spotted: Nate Archibald with a new job and a hard tea in his hand. Actor Chace Crawford has joined hard tea and kombucha maker Jiant as chief creative officer and part-owner. Crawford is best known for his TV roles on Gossip Girl (Nate Archibald) and The Boys (Kevin Moskowitz/The Deep).
