Ever wish your cold brew tasted a little more like a gin and tonic? If the answer is “yes,” you’ll want to head to Seattle’s Starbucks Reserve Roastery, where gin barrel-aged cold brew coffee is now available for a limited time.
Last March, Starbucks introduced its first barrel-aged coffee, Whiskey Barrel-Aged Sulawesi, available in two specialty drinks: a cold brew and the “Barrel Aged Con Crema.” This year, beginning March 13, gin barrel-aged cold brew coffee debuts exclusively at the Starbucks Reserve Roastery.
Inspired by the gin and tonic, the non-alcoholic coffee cocktail starts with Starbucks Rwandan coffee beans aged, unroasted, in oak barrels from Seattle’s Big Gin. Before that, the barrels held bourbon. The gin-infused beans are then slow-steeped to make cold brew concentrate, which gets a botanical boost from the gin barrels, plus a hint of caramel from the barrels’ previous tenants, bourbon. The gin barrel-aged cold brew concentrate is then shaken with ice, lime bitters, and finished with tonic, then garnished with a wedge of lime.
Jennifer Galbraith, Starbucks manager of product development for R&D, said in a press release, “The beans absorb the botanical essence of the gin, bringing out its bright citrus notes with a sweet caramel finish. The resulting cup is rich, nuanced and unlike anything we’ve tasted before.”
A botanical brew with hints of citrus, complementing rich Rwandan coffee and oak? Sounds pretty delicious to us.
