Coffee Pros Taste Test Coffiest With The San Francisco Chronicle

Soylent is a vegan meal replacement beverage that has gained a bit of popularity amongst the younger generation, or rather, the younger generation from the set of generations you would expect to drink meal replacement beverages, so like late-20s and early-30s. It’s like Ensure for Pitchfork readers.

Recently, Soylent released Coffiest, a version of their meal replacement drink but with coffee added. Being a Bay Area company (though now based in Los Angeles), the San Francisco Chronicle decided to do a little Coffiest taste test and invited some of the city’s best coffee roasters to join in. The results were better(?) than you’d think.

The panelists for this Coffiest cupping consisted of “Jen Apodaca, director of roasting at Royal Coffee; Andrew Barnett, founder and owner of Linea Caffe; Nicholas Cho, co-founder and head barista of Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters; Keba Konte, founder of Red Bay Coffee; Judith Mandel, quality control specialist at Blue Bottle Coffee; and Eileen Rinaldi, founder and owner of Ritual Coffee Roasters.” Not exactly lightweights, dude.

Each of the panelists was asked to rate the drink on overall taste, actual coffee flavor, texture, aftertaste, potential uses, its impact on the coffee industry, and how it could be made better. So, you know, your normal cupping rubric.

Answers included:

It’s kind of very generic. It’s not very great but it’s non-offensive. — Barnett

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and

It’s a little bit like if a Frappuccino melted and made a baby with Metamucil. — Cho

with the coffee flavor being described as:

… [in]distinguishable. I wouldn’t be able to say it’s this style of coffee or this kind of roast. — Rinaldi

Overall, the panelists didn’t hate it, which is probably a win. I certainly expected the to hate it.

During competition season, we here at Sprudge are normally chained to our desks by the stages to bring you the best damn live play-by-play coverage of the Barista and Brewers Cup championships over on Sprudge Live. During those action-packed days, our very own co-founder Zachary Carlsen has been known to take regular feedings of Soylent.

When asked for his thoughts on Coffiest, Carlsen stated:

Carlsen goes on:

I think it’s a good product for the person who might not have time to toast an Eggo and hover over a Chemex in the morning, or someone on a road trip, or a doctor doing a 13 hour night shift, or someone like me who enjoys all of life’s bounty. I was surprised and delighted in its chocolaty, not-too-sweet, vegan completeness. If you’re already a fan of Soylent 2.0 like me, then you’ll probably dig this new coffee-forward form of liquid food sustenance.

There you have it. Seven out of seven coffee pros agree, there’s definitely coffee in it. The rest was just a matter of taste.

Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network.

*top image via Soylent