illy COLD BREW

My vacation was good, thank you for asking.

illy (not Lily, illy) is a lot more than a canned coffee company, they’re sort of a coffee empire. Modern advancements in vertical synergy let Lily be a seller of instant coffee, ground and whole bean coffee, canned coffee, coffee makers and all sorts of coffee accessories. illy, which I will be writing with all lowercase letters as they do on the can, is a coffee behemoth, sort of like Ikea. You can stay inside their ecosystem and get everything you need, though the quality may not be the best compared to mixing and matching options.

Latte Macchiato, that interests me. A latte is usually an espresso shot with steamed milk added, while a macchiato is an espresso shot with very little milk added. This is sort of in the middle between the two, a bit more bitter but still definitely a milk drink. Notably, this has the fake sweetener taste that the Java Monster and Royal Mills did! illy, you tried to convince me you were high grade with your wonderful graphics package and your sleek Wegman’s appeal, but you fall in line with all the cheap sweetener and fake cream crowd. Honestly out of that batch of fake tasting drinks this one is the least poor, and if you squint your eyes and shake your head fast enough to make everything go fuzzy you could almost say it’s a chocolatey, altogether not unpleasant flavor. Notably, this has a decently high caffeine content, 130ml. The entire can is 250ml, and I’m no caffeine scientist but that sounds like half of this thing is just pure energy.

Maybe that’s the culprit, companies like illy and Royal Mills are cutting their standard coffee with caffeine to make them more energy dense. This ins’t in with the most expensive of our drinks but it’s getting up there in price, if you’re already at Wegman’s the High Brew nitro costs a few cents more but costs much less per ounce and tastes amazing! At this rate, go to the cafe inside Wegman’s and get yourself a real macchiato. Maybe my vacation has made me less attuned to the ways of the canned coffee, but knowing that Wegman’s will happily make you a real cup of coffee for the same price makes this a bit worse.

FLAVOR SCORE-5/8

VALUE SCORE-3/8