Bustelo Cool Iced Mocha

This cool mocha drink from Cafe Bustelo is the latest in a series of their coffee drinks made to make the decades old coffee company seem more cool and hip. Unfortunately, it is just not going to work with this canned chocolate coffee drink, lacking the taste of a good coffee and the stregnth of a Cuban Coffee. As a regular canned coffee drinker, this just can not hold a candle to the tastiness of a Starbucks, POM, or even a Frappio. For a small 8 ounce drink, I was really hoping for a whole lot more

After all, this drink is from Cafe Bustelo, one of the all time greatest coffee companies. They are solely responsible for bringing Cuban coffee out of Cuba and making it a standard must-have in Miami. I really liked their home ground blend, and fell desperately in love with their Espresso Roast blend - but this stuff is not all it should have been.

Taste:7
The drink is a "cafe con leche", meaning it's a rich beverage with both espresso and cream. It's also rich with carageenan and maltodexrin. In other words, it is rich with all the stuff people use to thicken up drinks like premade chocolate milk and soups. Overall, it does not taste bad, although I used to gross out my elementary school mates with tales of how there was seaweed in their half pints of chocolate milk cartons (carageenan is processed from a form of seaweed). The reason I did not find this as good as I hoped is that for one, it did not have a nice strong coffee flavor, and for two it as a big taste of Baking Soda.

There are Sooo many canned coffee drinks out there wih that baking soda taste - it is just awful. Baking Soda is one of those preservatives that should just never be mixed with coffee, even if i is a good cheap and non-deadly way to keep your coffee from going bad. While they could have done a whole lot worse, but there are soo many better choices out there if you want a canned coffee with a nice big jolt.

Buzz:8
While there have been srtonger coffees, I enjoy the nice little jolt one can get from a small eight ounce can. Mind you, I had to drink two of them to get a nice buzz on, but I got quite the rush from it. While there is no list of caffeine on the can, according to some websites, it lists as 120mg of caffeine per can, which is pretty serious. This is about the same as one and a half Red Bulls. Of course, this is also loaded with preservatives and a whole bunch of calories (132). At least they used real sugar and milk in here too.

Packaging:6
Not bad, but no that fantastic either. Nothing really impressed me about this drink , although I do enjoy their retro look. I just wish they took it a step further and really carried it through. All is good until you get to the techno font on the top and bottom of the can. The slogan a the top is a washed out red on brown, and impossible to see or read. It would have been super cool to see it all done in a retro font, carrying on the look and feel of Old Miami.
As for the mechanics, it has some areas to improve. There is no listing of the extra caffeine amount, and don't have their lid on correctly. There is no double facing of the can either, so it is harder for store clerks to face properly on shelves. I like the basic concept they were going for, but not thinking it all though until the end really hurt them.



http://www.daemonsfood.com/2009/09/07/grocery-bag-cafe-bustelo-cool-cafe-mocha/
http://coffeetea.about.com/od/kindsofcoffee/gr/bustelo.htm
http://beyondbeautybasics.com/thanks-bustelo-for-cafe-mocha-fashion-week-can-be-exhausting/