Everyone Says These Canned Cocktails Are Getting Them Super Drunk—What’s the Deal?
Canned cocktails are beloved for their variety and convenience. Whether you’re tailgating or hosting a backyard BBQ—or maybe the host put you on drinks duty—snagging a four-pack of canned margaritas is a lot easier than schlepping around a handle of tequila and bar ingredients. Plus, you don’t have to worry about busting out the fancy drinkware (or washing them either!). However, there’s one brand of canned spiked drinks that’s causing a lot of buzz, literally.
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Cutwater Spirits is a successful canned alcoholic beverage company. Their inventory includes popular tequila-, gin-, rum-, and vodka-based drinks, including margaritas, mules, lemon drop martinis, Long Island iced teas, mai tais, mojitos, and even whiskey sours.
However, the brand’s claim to fame seems to be its drinks’ high ABV levels. Alcohol by volume, or ABV for short, refers to the amount of alcohol content in a drink. So the higher the ABV, the stronger the beverage.
A canned beer or two probably won’t do you much damage, and the same goes for canned seltzer. That’s because most alcoholic canned beverages contain low to moderate ABV levels, ranging from four to six percent.
However, a majority of Cutwater’s top-sellers contain more than 10 percent ABV.
After drinking two Cutwater lime margaritas (12.5 percent ABV each), TikToker Loryn Powell sustained a 10 percent BAC (blood alcohol concentration) level for more than an hour.
Alcohol can be detected at five percent, and someone is considered “driving impaired” at seven percent, according to Alcohol.org. A person is deemed “intoxicated” with a 10 percent BAC level, with “decreased consciousness” occurring around 20 percent.
Typically, spiked canned drinks are 12 fluid ounces; you can also pick up “tallboys” of beer, which are 16 ounces. According to the Techniques for Effective Alcohol Management (TEAM) Coalition, here are examples of boozy drinks with their corresponding ABV.
Beers:
- 16 oz. Blue Moon has an ABV of 5.4 percent
- 25 oz. Bud Light has an ABV of 4.2 percent
- 25 oz. Budweiser has an ABV of five percent
- 24 oz. Coors Light has an ABV of 4.2 percent
- 16 oz. Heineken has an ABV of five percent
- 25 oz. Michelob Ultra has an ABV of 4.2 percent
Canned seltzers and cocktails:
- 16 oz. Mike’s Hard Lemon has an ABV of 5 percent
- 12 oz. Truly has an ABV of 5 percent
- 12 oz. White Claw has an ABV of 5 percent
So keeping this in mind, it makes a lot of sense why Cutwater drinks pack a heavier (A.K.A., tipsier) punch.
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If the math isn’t mathing for you just yet, TikToker and chemist Javon Ford (@javonford16) broke it down one step further in a recent video.
According to Ford, a Cutwater margarita contains the same amount of alcohol as a bartender-made margarita.
“If the [Cutwater] margarita follows a two ounces of tequila, two ounces of lime juice, and one ounce of triple sec recipe, that comes out to 1.5 fluid ounces of alcohol total. Since Cutwater has 12.5 percent of alcohol for 12 ounces, that also comes out to 1.5 fluid ounces of alcohol total,” explained Ford.
“Compared to regular beers, hard seltzers, or wine coolers, this has three times the amount of alcohol for one drink.” But here’s the kicker: “Drinking two of these is equivalent to drinking two margaritas or drinking five White Claws,” he revealed.
So if you start to feel the effects of alcohol after downing a single Cutwater, now you know why—you just put down three pints of beer in likely under an hour. When realistically, you might’ve spaced out three drinks over the course of a couple hours
“I think it just comes down to expectation,” reasoned Ford. “Because it’s in a can, people take it for granted, and they don’t drink water beforehand or they drink on an empty stomach, not realizing it has three times the amount of alcohol of a standard canned drink.