Stok's Un-Sweet Black Cold Brew Coffee

As I write this, we're having a heat wave, I don't have A/C, so I'm not going to make matters worse by drinking hot coffee. Yet... the reviews must be written and the addiction must be fed. Enter--cold brew coffee from the grocery store!


STŌK: UN-SWEET BLACK COLD BREW COFFEE

Cold-brew coffee is alleged to be less bitter and more caffeinated than the coffee we use making our trust coffeemakers, or otherwise run boiling water through ground coffee. Cold brew coffee is made by steeping beans in cooler liquid for 10-15 hours, drawing the flavor and caffeine more slowly from the beans and thus producing the magic juice we love so much.

Allison is wondering if this coffee mug is big enough.
We're wondering if ANY mug big enough when it comes to coffee.

While I've had cold brew coffees in the past (most recently an offering from Starbucks called Iced Cold Brew Chocolate Cream or something along those lines), I've not yet put one through the review process here at Shades of Gray. As a result, I could only say that I'd enjoyed the Starbucks drink but couldn't give a "formal" evaluation of the claims made about cold-brewed coffee. So, with it being summer and too damn hot to make and drink traditional coffee, I got myself a bottle of Stok Coffee's Un-Sweet Black Cold Brew from Safeway.

Stok is a Colorado-based company that brews coffee, but does not appear to roast their own beans. They exclusively use Arabica beans and offer a dozen or so different cold brew variants, including blends that are unsweetened, semi-sweet, chocolate- and vanilla-flavored. A common claim for all their blends is that they are "bold" and "flavorful".

As for the Un-sweet Black cold brew, I may have a different idea of what "bold" means, because I would define it as very mellow... flavorful, yes, but mellow and even a little sweet. Frequent readers know that I am attracted to flavored coffees, because the bitterness present in most roasts is not something I care for. In the case of Stok's Un-Sweet Black, I enjoyed it refrigerated, straight out the bottle. There was a distinct coffee flavor, but the bite I expect from black coffee was not present at all. In fact, this blend reminded me more of a blonde or light roast instead of the dark-roasted beans that I am led to believe form the foundation of cold-brewed coffee. It appears to be absolutely accurate that the cold-brew process pulls all the flavor and none of the bitterness from the coffee beans. The result is great tasting coffee, whether it's consumed cold, over ice, room temperature, or hot. (Since cold-brewed coffee is intended to be consumed hot or cold, I microwaved a couple mugs-worth and found that the Un-Sweet Black blend was as versatile as it was delicious.)

This was a coffee that worked equally well with all the standard mixers I use when reviewing coffees--Unsweetened Almond Milk, Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk, and sugar-free Italian Sweet Cream creamer. The resulting drinks were each wonderfully smooth, mixing with the coffee flavor in their own unique way. 

Since the basic coffee was so smooth and mellow, I branched out and tested it with some of the creamers I am trying to a future article with some creamer reviews. Whether it was the Coconut Creme-flavored creamer, Rice Krispies Treats-flavored creamer, the sugar free Chocolate Caramel-flavored, or the sugar free French Vanilla-flavored creamer, the result was tasty and pleasant. Similarly, when I tried this coffee with vodka, and with vodka and the sugar free French Vanilla creamer, and with the Unsweetened Vanilla Almond milk, the results were also each unique and pleasant.

If I had to mount any complaint about Stok's Un-Sweet Cold Brew Coffee, it's that when I first started drinking it, it kept me up at night. I do have trouble sleeping at times, but it has never been anything I've been able to trace back to coffee, so this was intially a little confusing to me. The confusion lifted once I discovered that cold brew coffee has a higher caffeine content than even light roasts do. (And this is, of course, not a a REAL complaint... it's just something I need to be aware of when it comes to what coffee I choose to drink in the afternoon.)

For the past several months, I've usually had a bottle of Starbuck's Unsweetened Blonde Roast Iced Coffee blend in my fridge; it's been my go-to when making iced coffee or when I made my own variation on the White Russian mixed drink. However, I find that I like Stok's far more and that it mixes so wonderfully with everything I've tried so far. I may not know what "blod" means in the context of Stok's Un-Sweet Black Cold Brew Coffee, but I know that I love it!