Boston Beer is “cranking up the dial on ABV” with its newest offering: Twisted Tea Extreme.
Twisted Tea Extreme, announced today, will be available in two 8% ABV flavors, Lemon and Blue Razz. Each flavor will be available in single-serve cans, hitting shelves early next month.
Boston Beer is testing out the high ABV offering in “highly developed Twisted Tea markets” first, including Montana, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Vermont, according to a Boston Beer spokesperson. The strategy is part of Boston Beer’s new innovation approach that will focus on regional feedback and insights before growing elsewhere.
The offering targets the convenience store channel, where Twisted Tea is already the No. 1 flavored malt beverage (FMB), according to the spokesperson.
Twisted Tea continues to dominate the hard tea market, accounting for 91% of hard tea sales in NIQ-tracked off-premise channels (through May 13), according to Bump Williams Consulting (BWC). The more than decade-old brand accounted for 27% of total FMB sales in off-premise channels, increasing dollar sales +34% year-over-year (YoY) in the quarter, according to Boston Beer’s Q1 earnings report.
Hard teas have been driving the growth within FMBs in 2023, with the subcategory increasing dollar sales +38.7% year-to-date (ending May 13), to nearly $385 million, now accounting for 2.3% share of total beer dollar sales in NIQ-tracked channels. Across all outlets (on- and off-premise), dollar sales for hard tea have improved +31% YTD versus 2022, maintaining that momentum in the last four weeks (+39% L4W), according to BWC.
Read more on the latest trends in hard tea here.
Boston Beer executives have repeatedly shared expectations that Twisted Tea will continue double-digit growth through the rest of 2023, remaining one of the bright spots for the beer giant as it continues to battle declines from Truly Hard Seltzer, Samuel Adams and Dogfish Head.
The company has also apparently learned from innovation mistakes in the past, where they attempted to expand nationwide at launch. Boston Beer CMO Lesya Lysyj shared these learnings last month during a BevNet Live panel, cautioning companies to learn from Boston Beer’s missteps and not expand innovations too quickly.
“We’re a very innovative company, we always are placing a lot of bets, and the biggest mistakes we’ve made is we go too fast, we get too excited, and we get to go too quickly to either expand or launch line extensions or whatever before we’ve just held the held the line,” Lysyj said.