Tasting boozy coffees
Perhaps the drinks on the table before us were an inevitability. After all, if one trend is good (cold coffee is hot!), why not layer on another (millennials love alcoholic drinks that don’t taste like booze) — and then another (they also are crazy for canned beverages!) for good measure?
A turducken of fads is one way of seeing the miniboomlet of iced coffee laced with varying degrees of malt or wine-based liquor and served in the slender aluminum tubes that have come to dominate the beverage aisles.
Beer giant Pabst Blue Ribbon was one of the first big entrants, introducing its hard coffee this summer. Then the third-wave coffee maker La Colombe partnered with MillerCoors for its high-end, cold-brewed version. Both are available in limited markets as the companies test demand. Smaller labels, too, have gotten into the mix.
Another explanation for it is purely functional. Booze might be fun, but it can make you sleepy, too, so pairing it with caffeine keeps the good times going.
As one colleague described the downers/uppers mix: “It’s the Judy Garland of drinks.”
We assembled four varieties and gave them a whirl. As a class, our tasters found them to be supersweet and overly creamy, with one exception. But the overriding response was simply ... confusion.
When, exactly, were we supposed to knock back these drinks? The sugar and dairy bombs are hardly light, session-able tipples. And they don’t pair very well with food, except maybe brunch. Maybe in place of dessert, we wondered?
Here’s what we tasted:
Cafe Agave Spiked Cold Brew: The brews distinguish themselves by being the booziest of the bunch, clocking in at 12.5% alcohol. We detected the alcohol-forward profile of all four flavors — espresso, mocha, vanilla-cinnamon and salted caramel — as well as a cloying sweetness, but we were divided on whether this was a good or bad thing. One taster panned the unpleasant alcohol burn, while another liked that “at least it’s not pretending it’s not booze.”
La Colombe Hard Cold Brew: This pairing of a legit coffee brand with a beer behemoth made us optimistic. Once poured, the line (it comes in black and vanilla-flavored) also distinguished itself by being the only one we tasted to omit dairy, meaning the concoctions were lighter-bodied and less like dessert. Tasters preferred the black variety; it tasted like a regular chilled coffee or espresso. 4.2% alcohol.
Newground Hard Dutch Latte: This Dutch import comes in two latte varieties: chai and regular cafe. The pale, weakly spiced chai got low marks, but several tasters thought the cafe latte, with its heavybodied creaminess, could swap in for an after-dinner drink. 5% alcohol.
Pabst Blue Ribbon Hard Coffee: Tasters identified something awfully familiar about this one, but there was no consensus on just what it was. Nestle Quik, one suggested. Other sweets that it conjured included a liquefied malted-milk ball, a milkshake and a melted Snickers. 5% alcohol.