Kofi Ti - Cold Brew Coffee and Tonic

i really enjoy coffee. my relationship with the dark brew edges dangerously on “love-hate” territory (they say binging on coffee is a prime cause of anxiety), but i’ve been drinking coffee since my early teens. that being said, i am by no means a connoisseur and i have not quite gone into specialty coffee territory. cold brew is equally mysterious to me - in a way, i get it, but really now… you won’t catch me looking for cold brew actively and you’re just as unlikely to hear me debating over its advantages. tonic and cold brew coffee sounds terrible, i’ll be honest, but i’m going in with an open mind.

taste profile: the drink foams very aggressively as I crack it open, despite me having treated it reasonably well. it smells like coffee, strong coffee at that. the taste of the foam is ominous (and so is the colour - dirty brown) - very bitter coffee mixed with the sourness and volume of tonic. the first impression - awful, truly awful. the taste is very, very strong - the ashen bitterness of coffee twisted by the bitterness and sourness of the tonic with little else going for it. as i have more of it, i realise that the aftertaste is just as you would imagine it to be - strong coffee and tonic bitterness. on top of everything else, it’s fizzy, a texture i just can’t associate with the taste of coffee. i can only characterise the complex as “loud” - it definitely stands out, but it is so unpleasant i am having trouble describing it. i can’t sense anything subtle in this, no hope of redemption whatsoever. the list of ingredients says quinine and that’s what tonic is, but damn… look, i’m just going to stop here. on to the rating.

rating: 4/10. this is the most niche, “hipster” thing i have ever had, probably. honestly, this is a lot like a very specific strain of bad sex - all the elements of a pleasant evening are present, but their arrangement have made it into an unpleasant experience, one you likely want to forget as quickly as possible.