Two things we know to be true: We love coffee and we love booze. But combining them has never been our, uh, cup of tea. Espresso martinis? No thanks. Irish coffee? We'll pass.
So when we heard Pabst Blue Ribbon (or "PBR," as it's so fondly known by frat boys and Brooklynites alike) had created a booze-infused iced latte, we were skeptical. Haven't they heard that ol' rule about mixing uppers and downers?!
The canned "Hard Coffee," as they're calling it, is a caffeinated malt beverage with 5% ABV that contains real Arabica and Robusta coffee beans, milk and vanilla flavoring. To be clear, the drink doesn't actually contain beer, but is rather a malted beverage mixed with real java.
For now, the boozy canned latte is only available in five states—Pennsylvania, Maine, New Jersey, Florida and Georgia—according to PBR's Twitter. The company suggested residents of those states check out the Product Finder on their website to see where the drinks can be purchased.
But the boozy bev seems to have received a pretty good response in those test markets. On beer rating site Untappd, PBR's juiced up java has a rating of 4.39 out of 5 from 34 reviews...though, take it with a grain of salt. "Forgot to check this in last night. But hear the admins have been deleting this anyway so it won’t be up long..." one user wrote on the site, possibly referencing that bad reviews were being removed from the Hard Coffee page.
Other taste testers have compared the drink to a spiked Yoohoo (the chocolate-milk-like concoction we used to drink in middle school). TBH, we're not totally turned off by that comparison…
Just think, now there's no excuse for being too tired to go out with friends. (Noooooooo!)
