Hard Iced Tea Showdown: Twisted Tea vs. Surfside vs. Lipton vs. High Noon

Twisted Tea helped establish hard iced tea as a mainstream category, but it now faces genuine competition from several other approaches to the same basic concept.

Twisted Tea

Launched in 2001 by Boston Beer Company (makers of Samuel Adams), Twisted Tea remains the best-selling hard iced tea brand, malt-based like beer but specifically brewed and flavored to taste like sweet tea rather than beer — by 2022, it had become the best-selling hard iced tea in the US by a significant margin.

Surfside

A more recently launched hard iced tea brand, Surfside built distinctive branding around a laid-back, beach-culture aesthetic, competing directly in the same malt-based hard iced tea space Twisted Tea pioneered, with its own flavor variations and marketing positioning.

Lipton Hard Iced Tea

Leveraging the globally recognized Lipton tea brand name, this hard iced tea entry trades on decades of brand trust in the non-alcoholic tea space to enter the hard iced tea category, a genuinely different marketing approach than brands built from scratch specifically around alcohol.

High Noon

While technically positioned more as a vodka-based hard seltzer/RTD brand than a pure hard iced tea competitor, High Noon's tea-adjacent flavor offerings compete for some of the same casual, sessionable drinking occasions as traditional hard iced tea, built on real vodka rather than a malt base.

Key Differences Beyond Brand Name

The most significant technical difference among these options is base: Twisted Tea, Surfside, and Lipton Hard Iced Tea are generally malt-based (similar to beer production), while High Noon is built on real vodka — meaning High Noon's tea-flavored offerings are technically closer to an RTD cocktail than a true "hard iced tea" in the traditional malt-based sense.

Choosing Based on Preference

If you want the original, most established hard iced tea experience: Twisted Tea remains the benchmark. If you want to explore newer entrants with different branding and flavor takes: Surfside and Lipton offer genuine alternatives within the same malt-based category. If you specifically prefer a real-spirit base over malt: High Noon's tea flavors are the more spirit-forward option.