Wild Leaf Black Tea

In its simplest form, hard iced tea is iced tea that’s spiked with alcohol. It’s not a new idea — it’s been around for a while — but it’s found itself in a bit of a hard tea Renaissance as of late. Hard teas include ready-to-drink beverages you can buy in cans and bottles, most famously Twisted Tea. Twisted Tea takes iced tea and spikes it with vodka, though the brewing process itself imparts it with alcohol. Note that hard iced tea is not typically carbonated, though some offerings like Lover Boy are sparkling.

Hard iced tea tastes like you’d expect it to — the slightly bitter, sometimes sweet, always refreshing taste of iced tea blended with a boozy kick. Some hard iced teas may be sweet, while others might lean more towards citrus ingredients. You can find middle-of-the-road offerings like Peach, Raspberry and Slightly Sweet. You can also find highly creative teas like orange chai, hibiscus pomegranate and white tea peach. The point is, no matter how far you like to go into the world of flavors, hard iced tea is ready to take you there.

Hard iced tea tends to stick to the same alcohol by volume (ABV) levels as your average beer: around 5% ABV. That leads to a refreshingly smooth, fun drink that’s usually infused with dashes of personality like lemon, peach, raspberry or an assortment of other fruits and essences. It also means you’re not signing up for a huge commitment when you crack open a can — most hard iced tea is moderate in alcohol so you can enjoy a bit more if the mood strikes.

Hard iced tea plays well with others. You can pair it with just about anything, starting with your standard cookout food (because what better drink for a cookout?): think barbeque, juicy burgers and hot wings. Hard iced tea also goes great with crispy fried chicken and pizzas, not to mention fries. You’d be hard-pressed to find a hot sandwich that hard iced tea didn’t complement. You can also pair it with pasta and just about any other Italian dish.

If you want to pour yourself a slug of hard iced tea, your best bet is to go with the tried-and-tested American Pint Glass. Is it fancy? No. But it ticks all the boxes. It holds a generous 16 oz., it’s good and heavy in the hand, it handles carbonation well and it’s easy to clean and store. If you’re going for a sparkling, fancier hard iced tea, consider choosing a flute. Its narrow opening will channel all that fruity fragrance to your nose and help retain carbonation.

Hard iced tea is surprisingly light compared with your average beer. Take the fact that it has 0 grams of total carbs — you can’t get much lighter than that. It does have 130 calories, which is still under the average of 150 calories for a 12 oz. serving of beer. It’s hard to believe since hard iced tea is so packed with flavor. In many cases, you’ll find even fruit-forward hard iced teas don’t deviate too far from this low carb/low-calorie benchmark.