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Over the next four years, the canned cold brew coffee market is expected to grow by more than $400 million, reaching a total valuation of $1.37 billion. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. In 2021, cold drinks accounted for 75 percent of Starbucks’ total beverage sales—a result that led CEO Howard Schultz to describe the company’s global cold coffee opportunity as “simply enormous.” And yet, despite its substantial tailwind, the consensus among my friends, co-workers, and online coffee communities (yes, these are separate groups), is that canned cold brew stinks.
When not canned, cold brew has a high approval rating among my coffee-drinking peers. As its name suggests, the beverage is brewed cold, a process that typically involves soaking coarsely ground coffee in water, steeping the mixture overnight, and then finely straining it. When brewed cold, coffee extracts slower, meaning it takes longer for the beans’ flavorful compounds to dissolve into water. The process impacts coffee’s flavor and chemical makeup, ultimately producing a beverage many describe as “smoother” than traditional, hot-brewed coffee.
