Peet's Cold Brew On The Go

Peet's is my favorite coffee chain, for the quality of the most important product: the coffee.  Even their decaf is good, and the company-wide policy to never serve brewed coffee more than 30 minutes old really does lead to a better experience.  Other places may have more fancy drinks, or hawk better donuts, but, Peet's delivers on what I care about, and that is the taste of my coffee.  But you know that already anyway, as I've reviewed Peet's before.

Today I'm here to review their latest foray, as Peet's has joined a slew of other companies in the packaged ready-to-drink cold brew market, with three products.  The first is the cold brew itself, served in glass bottles, straight up.  The bean of choice is an East African Baridi Blend.  The other two are milk variants, served in little milk cartons.  The packaging is cute although not really practical, but, the product is fantastic.

All the products are available in grocery stores and Peet's stores.  They require refrigeration, and all the ones I've seen so far seem to have a Best-By date of ~2 weeks away, basically, like fresh milk.  So not exactly convenient to stock up on, but, I think worth it.

Dark Chocolate Cold Brew.

The versions with milk are served in cute little cardboard single serve milk cartons, like the kind I hadn't seen since elementary school.  Seriously, how cute is the packaging?  Opening one of these was serious nostalgia, although, I remembered immediately that I hated drinking out of them.  Mushy cardboard is not pleasant!  And, once I got to opening my second one, I also remembered why I hated OPENING them.  Seriously annoying.  So, cute, but, there is a reason we don't use these style carton anymore ...

Dark Chocolate Cold Brew.

"Baridi Cold Brew made even more irresistible with the freshest milk and rich, dark Guittard cocoa to bring out the coffee’s natural chocolate notes."

So I poured it into a cup, and added ice.  You can see the dark, rich color here.

This was a serious iced mocha.  Very rich and chocolately.  Chocolate milk for grown ups, aka, quality chocolate, and uh, caffeine.  It was delicious.

Not that the recipe was revolutionary: cold brewed coffee, milk, sugar, Guittard cocoa, sodium bicarbonate, salt, gellan gum.  Interestingly, the dark chocolate version is made with regular milk, the au lait with nonfat.  Besides the gellan gum and sodium bicarbonate, it really is just chocolate milk with coffee in it.

I greatly enjoyed this, it was rich, it was chocolately, and I gladly stock my fridge with these.

Coffee Au Lait Cold Brew.

"Bold Baridi Cold Brew paired with the freshest, rBST-free milk* and pure cane sugar."

I moved on to the Coffee Au Lait.  This one really is just coffee milk.  The ingredient list is simple:  cold brewed coffee, reduced fat milk, sugar, sodium bicarbonate.

As you can see, without the addition of the chocolate, it is a lighter color.  It was far less exciting than the dark chocolate version, since, well, it was just sorta sweet, cold, coffee milk.  Good, and likely refreshing on a hot day, but I'd rather just buy the pure cold brew, and add my own milk and sweetener of choice to taste.