When cold brew saw the breadth of its domain, it wept for there were no more things to combine with.
Have you started experimenting in the kitchen yet? Maybe you’ve gotten into sourdough (the bread isn’t sour, it’s all the people who have opinions on your bread making that are sour). Perhaps it’s biscuits. I hear growing scallions is having a moment. Being cooped up inside for an extended period of time and a pantry of odds and ends make strange bedfellows. Strange like “pita chip cinnamon sugar raisin string cheese nachos” weird. It’s sweet, it’s savory, it’s salty; in theory it should work, right?
Turns out the folks over at Ocean Spray are going a little stir crazy too, because they’re stirring cold brew coffee into their cranberry juice and it’s well… you see where this is going.
As reported by Delish, the seemingly incongruous union of cold brew coffee and “fruit juice” goes by the name Ocean Spray Brew and it is currently available in two flavors: Cranberry Blueberry and Cranberry Lemonade. Per the Ocean Spray website, both versions are touted as “providing natural energy and antioxidants with no added sugar” as well as being an “excellent source of antioxidant vitamin C and vitamin B.” It also gets most of its caffeine from green coffee extract instead of the “splash of real cold brew coffee” it is made with, so do with that information what you will.
Assuming I haven’t lost you thus far, the real question remains: how does it taste? The reviews on the Ocean Spray website are unsurprisingly bi-modal—either you love it or you hate, five stars or one star—but are overall very positive, each holding an average rating of four out of five stars. But if five-star review titles like “interesting” and “so much better than expected” and “surprise! It actually tastes good” are any indication, Ocean Spray Brew seems to benefit from lowered expectations.
But don’t let me or some anonymous internet people tell you how to feel about the Brew. You’re an adult and can decide for yourself how you think cold brew and fruit juice from concentrate taste together. Both flavors of Ocean Spray Brew are currently available at Target AND are eligible for in-store pickup or delivery. You can get Sprayded—aka “faded on the Spray,” a term I just came up with and Ocean Spray can have if they would like to pay for it—in a socially responsible (and secretive) way.
Or, if you are put off by all the extra ingredients, might I suggest a few natural alternatives? For the Cranberry Blueberry, make a whole mess of cold brew with a natural processed Ethiopian coffee, perhaps an Ardi, and then top it off with an iced Kenyan coffee. You’ve got the blueberry based from the Ardi and then a nice sparkling cranberry flavor from the Kenya. For the Cranberry Lemonade, make your cold brew using an underdeveloped washed Yirgacheffe and then top it off with the same Kenya iced coffee. Sour lemon and cranberry flavor explosion!
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
