Review: Coolbrew Coffee

Review from Single Serve Coffee.com - Coffee Pod Reviews A reader sent in some information on a new type of single serve coffee from the New Orleans Coffee Company - Coolbrew. It's not made from pods, but from coffee concentrate. Since it's Summer and extremely hot here in the Northeast, we welcomed the opportunity to review some single serve iced coffee. I'm not sure how much easier you need to get than coffee pods, but this idea of whipping up a cup of coffee from concentrate is intriguing.

"What is Coolbrew? CoolBrew® is NOT instant coffee. It is FRESH coffee in an Instant! The beauty of CoolBrew® is that you can have a delicious cup of gourmet flavored coffee (Hot or Iced!) in seconds, without the mess or hassle of brewing coffee."

For the purposes of this review we stuck to iced coffee and not making hot coffee. It's just too hot here in Boston right now to deal with a hot cup of coffee (though I may sneak a cup and go down into the basement a little later on just to get cool).

CoolBrew Coffee Flavors

Adrian from The New Orleans Coffee Company sent us in the following flavors to review:

• French Roast
• Original (Coffee and Chicory)
• Decaf
• Vanilla
• Hazelnut
• Mocha
• Toasted Almond

It's also good to note the flavors are a blend of coffee "flavor" and the regular coffee and chicory blend.

Each flavor comes in it's own dispenser complete with a measuring reservoir for putting the right amount Coolbrew.

Making a Cup of Coolbrew Coffee

Making a cup of Coolbrew Coffee is pretty dark easy. You simply:

• Pick the flavor you want to mix up

• Fill up the reservoir to 1oz
• Ice up the glass (we have crushed ice on our fridge door)
• Dump in the Coolbrew
• Add some Milk & Sugar to taste
• Drink

123-Easy

Tasting CoolBrew Coffee

We started with the original blend of Coolbrew Coffee. This flavor is a mix of regular coffee beans and chicory coffee. We can't say that we really cared for this iced coffee that much. My friend Rich was over last night and just felt the coffee didn't have as much flavor as he would want. Also - it seemed more like a white russian than a cup of iced coffee.

We moved onto the Moca CoolBrew and the results were much better. The mocha had a nice coffee taste to it and seemed more like an iced coffee flavored beverage we've had at Starbucks or the like. I then tried the Vanilla flavored CoolBrew and also liked this much more than the standard flavor.

The Vanilla like the mocha is pretty straight up flavored iced coffee. We added a wee bit of sugar to our Whole Milk, CoolBrew Vanilla, and ice mixture. Not bad. Overall I think the Mocha is a little more interesting but the vanilla has a good flavor.

Conclusion

CoolBrew coffee is indeed easy to make. You won't need a single serve coffee machine, just a spoon, glass, ice, and some milk and you're ready to go. We've been told they are coming out with a stand alone commercial hot and cold brewer in the coming months. We'll keep you posted on how that develops.

We're going to give CoolBrew coffee a 2.5 out of 5 pods. It's not amazing iced coffee, but it is good and we recommend sticking with the flavored varieties. Also the convenience is pretty compelling if you want to just have a cup of iced coffee without firing up your FrancisFrancis! or single serve coffee brewer.

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