The process of making coffee is an art. From ensuring the milk is frothed at the perfect temperature to making sure that the crema of the coffee is poured perfectly, making a good italian-style coffee the right way requires practice and dedication.
The process via which a coffee is poured can change a lot about the way it tastes and feels- cappuccino, ristretto, latte, espresso and other forms of coffee are all made from the same ingredients, just presented differently.
Unfortunately, not all of us have the time in our busy schedules to squeeze in an idyllic latte at a sidewalk cafe on the way to work. The hectic nature of modern life often forces us to turn to the dreaded instant, granulated coffee, or worse- energy drinks.
Packed full of heart-disease inducing chemicals, sugars, and artificial additives, energy drinks are an express ticket to type 2 diabetes or cardiac arrest. Fortunately, a small US-based coffee roasting company is promising to change the coffee game.
Colombe Coffee Roasters has recently released a range of ready-to-drink, pre-frothed, cafe-style coffee beverages in a unique packaging system that is about to revolutionize the instant coffee world. In this article, we’ll take a look at the Colombe Draft Latte and find out what makes it so special.
What Is The La Colombe Coffee Roasters Draft Latte?
Presenting itself as the “Next Generation of Coffee”, Colombe Coffee Roasters is offering a groundbreaking new development in instant coffee technology.
Instant coffee in a can, even artisan-styled ready to drink solutions, have been around for some time- but none of them have the delivery of a freshly brewed and frothed cafe coffee. Ready to drink canned coffee is also often extremely rich in sugar content, making it a particularly unhealthy alternative to a robust single origin macchiato.
Colombe Coffee Roasters are a coffee supplier with a different, presenting themselves as health and eco friendly coffee suppliers. The Colombe range already offers coffee connoisseurs a wide range of single origin beans, blends, tea, and organic products, but La Colombe Coffee Roasters Draft Latte is an evolution in the way instant ready to drink coffee is served.
Instead of simply packing over-sugared instant coffee mix into a can and shipping it out, Colombe have decided to do something different the market hasn’t seen before. Each Draft Latte is an organic, high quality artisan coffee blend, served in a unique 9 oz can that offers a number of interesting design features.
First of all, La Colombe Coffee Roasters Draft Latte is poured through a custom designed lip guard that delivers a drinking experience similar to a takeaway coffee cup, and makes it harder for your morning coffee to spill while on the commute to work.
The milk used in the Draft Latte is a cut above the prepasteurized powder-mix milks found in most instant coffee, and the coffee blend is similarly upper-end.
Draft Lattes from Colombe Coffee Roasters are brewed with Colombe’s Nizza coffee blend. Consisting of a medium roast blend with beans sourced from Brazil, Colombia, the Congo, and Nicaragua, the Nizza blend is named after one of the Co-founder of Colombe’s home city- Nice, France.
The Nizza blend offers a honey-sweet roasted bean with nutty undertones, with a fruity, somewhat tart palate. The Draft Latte is the only ready-to-drink coffee available on the market that uses high quality blends like the Nizza blend and the different definitely shows.
The most interesting aspect of the Draft Latte, however, is the product can itself. Each can of Draft Latte has an innovative gas valve on the bottom called the “Innovalve”, which combines the milk and coffee inside into a thick, creamy mixture that replicates a professional barista coffee perfectly.
The La Colombe Coffee Roasters Draft Latte Difference
Colombe’s Draft Lattes are available in four different flavors:
- The Original Draft Latte: Colombe’s original Draft Latte is their classic latte offering, and offers a unique advantage in that it is naturally sweetened and contains no added sugar.
- Triple Draft Latte: The Triple Draft Latte is a triple-shot version of the original blend, offering a higher caffeine hit for those early work mornings or late night cram sessions.
- Mocha Draft Latte: As the name implies, Colombe’s Mocha Draft Latte is an organic cocoa and Nizza coffee roast blend, sweetened with a pinch of cane sugar.
- Vanilla Draft Latte: The Vanilla Draft Latte is the same formula as the Original Draft Latte, with an added flavor hit in the form of natural vanilla and a hint of maple. Like the Mocha, the Vanilla Draft Latte is sweetened with cane sugar.
Colombe’s Draft Lattes are surprisingly healthy for instant ready-to-drink coffee. Each Draft Latte contains just 120 calories, which is far less than the average can of red bull, which contains 223 calories– most of which are sugar.
The milk used in the Draft Lattes is some of the best available in any ready-to-drink coffee product on the market- all of Colombe’s Draft Lattes are made in a cGMP production facility located in Michigan, and the milk used to create them is sourced from a local farm just 10 miles from the facility.
The cows used to create the milk in the Draft Latte range aren’t treated with any growth hormones such as rBST, which makes it organic and far healthier than artificially hormone treated milk sources.
The milk used by Colombe also has a unique feature that makes it compatible with lactose intolerant individuals- which make up over 70% of the population. Colombe add the lactase enzyme that lactose individuals lack to the milk before it’s added to the Draft Latte recipe, rendering it lactose-free and safe to drink.
As an added bonus, each Draft Latte contains a decent amount of protein, at about 7 grams per latte, which can provide a nutritional boost to fitness enthusiasts.
La Colombe Coffee Roasters Draft Latte Summary Review
Colombe’s Draft Lattes are one of the most innovative “energy drinks” we’ve seen in a while, and are about as close you can get to real barista coffee outside of a coffee shop short of installing a coffee machine in your own home. If you’re looking for the ultimate ready-to-drink coffee, the Colombe Draft Latte delivers.
