POP/BOTTLE COLD BREW

I’m so sorry but I think we may have another cheater on our hands. This coffee is cold brew with cream, but also advertises getting a nice sweetness from coffee berry and dates instead of pure sugar. It also has out milk instead of whole milk and pink Himalayan sea salt and rosemary in it, somehow. This is our first of a few coffees from Earth Fare, a health conscious grocery store in a similar vein to Whole Foods, but less corporate. Earth Fare is a southeastern chain with one location in Ohio, they’ve had a rocky corporate history and have gone out of business only to come back to it. Of the few earth fare stores still kicking the one in my college town is one of the premieres. It’s a perfect market for a store like Earth Fare, the demand for organic, holistically sourced and expensive foods from the crunchy granola types is heavy but I don’t see any of them willingly walking into a Whole Foods any time soon.

I got four coffees from Earth Fare, it was actually my first stop in the buying process. It was also when I realized the price of this project was going to be far, far more than I had anticipated. Despite all being in smaller cans the drinks purchased from here were amazingly expensive. I bought 9 drinks at Li Mings and, with tax, payed 22 dollars for the lot. The BOSS coffee’s did me no favors there. At Earth Fare I bought 4 drinks and paid 16 dollars. One of them was 5 dollars!!! But I bought them all anyway, In the name of scientific research. I am a thorough rabbit, I tell ya ‘what.

So what does 43.6 cents an ounce taste like? Nothing like coffee, I’ll say that much. The coffee berry and dates and oat milk and salt and rosemary make for an amazing flavor profile, rich and fruity while also being slightly savory. I imagine the pink salt is there to make up for something lacking in the oat milk but that’s purely speculation. This drink tastes good but I don’t know if I’d really classify it as a canned coffee by the definition I’m going for. It’s too artisanal, you know? My goal for this project was to find something thats as cheap as it gets while still passing the bar for ‘coffee.’ This is much more expensive than a good cup of real quality coffee and it tastes nothing like coffee! Well wait, maybe that’s the idea all along. It’s not a canned coffee drink, but rather a replacement for artisanal berry and bean type mixtures. By that metric is does its job well, and probably for less money too!

FLAVOR SCORE-6/8

VALUE SCORE-2/8