TASCO ICED COFFEE

Ah, dear sweet Tasco. Truly the one that started it all. I think I had had some Starbucks something or rathers before this my freshman year of college but Tasco is what really started me on my long journey of canned coffee self discovery. I used to be very staunchly against coffee of all sorts, the most I would do was a Starbucks frappachino in a bottle (forgive me) and a plain ol’ espresso as an exam day tradition. Things like Tasco got me more into coffee, I saw it as something that could be cheap and enjoyable. I tried it earlier this year and it was my go-to for a while, up until recently.

The day before this review process started I was out with a friend, I had had a long day of driving around with my girlfriend buying the last few cans of coffee and needed a pick me up. We were going by Li-Mings already so she could get some Christmas snacks for a friend and I thought ‘what the heck, a Tasco won’t spoil my palette for the days to come.’ I wish Tasco had fallen a bit farther down the review schedule, but random is as random does. It’s not quite as good as I recall it being, honestly, the cheapness really shows through. Theres an artificial sweetener flavor through this, sugar doesn’t do much to mask it. The coffee taste is masked pretty hard by it. A cheaper Starbucks frappachino would be a good comparison, really, a drink so diluted with creams and sugars that it’s hard to call a coffee.

Still, this is one of the cheapest drinks on this list by a good margin, 4th cheapest behind pokka, highlands and the dollar tree special (which im simply over the moon about getting to.) It also comes in a smaller size, while this 8 ounce can retailed for a dollar 69 theres a 6 ounce baby can for a dollar 39. So if you really need a cheap pick me up with a decent enough flavor then go for it. Also, I appreciate how this can gives ratios of how much of each ingredient it contains. 86.5% water, 6% sugar, 4% coffee and 3.5% non-dairy creamer (the culprit behind the taste I imagine.) Another thing, this and a few other coffees on this list come In incredibly sturdy cans. Like, my goodness it must be double the thickness of a traditional American soda can! You can weld off this thing it’s so dense! This can gets you 20 cents at the exchange, theres that much raw metal in these. Thick cans will be pointed out whenever they come up.

FLAVOR SCORE-5/8

VALUE SCORE-7/8