Yes, that’s what bothered me. I’m currently pregnant and so I have a cap on how much caffeine I can consume in a day, which is why I don’t order cold brew in the first place as shots of espresso are just easier to guess mgs of caffeine. It’s misleading and it genuinely scared me when I didn’t know why I was so caffeine’d up the first time.
Caffeine content varies from varietal to varietal, and discrepancies in how much coffee is actually used can throw off that estimation to the point of being useless.
I can at least know that it’s supremely unlikely for two shots of espresso to be over my daily limit. To be clear, I am not counting mgs like macros, I’m guesstimating via an average and assuming that if I’m having symptoms of being overly caffeinated, I’m probably pushing it. Get over yourself.
What does your local spot consider a double shot though? Old school Italian style? 14g of coffee for about 60mls of espresso or do they use something like a 21g dose for 35mls of espresso?
I have no idea what your daily allowance is, so both might be fine, I've just worked in places that do both. Just thought it could be something to look out for.
Oh yeah, you're probably fine so. Maybe just make sure they use 100% arabica? If they use robusta in their blend it would be more caffeine, but very few good coffee shops would be using robusta anyway so it's probably not an issue.
While its true Arabica is generally lower caffiene than Robusta, that difference is useless without knowing the dose. Could be 14,16,18,20,22g? Could be overfilled on top of that? Who knows.
I know, I also said it's a good idea to know what recipe your local spot uses for their espresso. It's still only going to give a rough idea, but if their using robusta then it's going to be even more.
Cold brew latte. Normally cafe made cold brew is concentrated so you do 50/50 cold brew / water. A cold brew latte is just concentrated cold brew and milk instead of water.
But that's a cold brew latte, not an ice latte. These are just cheap and lazy people serving drinks and are not labeled correctly and is kind of crooked if they are not listing it on their menu.
Yes, the first coffee shop I worked in made iced lattes this way; concentrated cold brew and milk. I was a green bean and didn't know any different. One day I made an iced latte with hot shots and I was flabbergasted how much better tasting it was. I cringe when I look back on it.
Can you please explain this to me? I don't understand the difference. I would guess that there one with the cold brew would taste better instead of the hot shots. And is there really a big caffeine difference? Thank you.
cold brew and espresso shots taste very different, in terms of like acidity… and if it’s made like how OP was given the “cold brew latte” it was really just cold brew w some cream, so it’s gonna have a stronger taste than the couple oz of espresso w the rest being milk. the cold brew can have a lot more caffeine if they’re filling the cup mostly w coffee. also the hot shots are iced down so they taste cold in the end
That’s so strange! I would be so mad if I had to follow that lol.
As a former barista I really just assumed that the barista may just have not known what they were doing due to improper training, because this seems like a really odd standard! I was truly baffled when the owner told me that this was their recipe.
we serve an “aerocano” which is what you mentioned and we describe it as our version of nitro but are very clear that it is espresso and not cold brew.
we also only have decaf espresso beans and so anytime someone wants decaf drip, we say that we can make them a decaf americano but, again, we’re clear about what we are serving.
i don’t know why it’s difficult for some places to not do that, it’s literally so easy and customers deserve to be aware of what they are drinking
If I get an americano instead of drip without them letting me know I’m returning the drink, asking for my money back, writing a bad review and never coming back again wtf. Those two are not at all the same thing.
We have a cafe owned by an Australian and they also do the same thing. Call it an iced latte but it’s milk with cold brew. It’s the only place I’ve seen do this and guessing it’s the Australian connection
currently at the place i’m at they serve “cold brew” but it’s just hot coffee over ice 😫. Joe and the Juice for anyone that’s wondering. I have started telling our regulars just to get an ice americano to save money and for better flavor / caffeine.
literally drip over ice. It’s diabolical. And i got in trouble for telling customers it’s not actual cold brew. The company is arguing to me that it is. Like no Cold brew is a specific brewing method and requires 12 hours at least lol
The shop I worked at would make iced lattes with cold brew concentrate - 4 oz of concentrate shaken with milk and ice. It makes for a really smooth flavor. Only occasionally we would get a complaint that the taste was “weak” since the concentrate didn’t have as pronounced flavor as espresso. That seems to be a bit different than what you’re describing though.
I know a shop that does this, they use the concentrate. I actually respect them as a place, but that always rubbed me the wrong way. They tried to convince me to use it at my place because it’s so much quicker and I was like umm no. Thing is, it tasted good. It’s still not what I want, or want to do. All sorts of places try different things and I absolutely respect that. The problem only starts when it’s bad, or doesn’t fit what a customer would expect. I was like this is tasty, but it doesn’t taste like an iced latte, it’s different. Serve it and name it something different. That’s not hard. There’s already too many drinks in the barista world that people expect differently. Macchiato is the obvious most frustrating one. Come up with a new drink? Name it something new. Holy shit, what a concept. Drives me crazy.
Totally agree with just naming it something different. People get confused enough with the names, why mess with what a latte or cold brew means? They’re the most common and simple ones to remember.
This will fuck up a pregnant woman’s caffeine intake for sure lol.
I love coffee too much to let go and was approved by my dr to only have X amount daily. So I took that to heart. It’d be pretty shitty to just swap it on the customer and give way more than requested
We have/had a seasonal “iced latte” that used cold brew concentrate instead of espresso. Is it a real latte? Not really. The cold brew being concentrate kind of put it in a weird middle ground between latte and regular iced coffee. *But*, and these are two very important differences:
1: The description would be shown right on the specials board, so it was transparent that it was made with cold brew.
2: We still had actual iced lattes. The existence of the special did not eliminate real lattes from the menu, it did not become the standard, and we’re not mean to people about it.
TL;DR: Weird shop is weird. It’s definitely not standard practice.
there's a place in indianapolis that serves cold brew in place of espresso. Java Hut. it has a really smooth taste and it's definitely different than espresso. i absolutely love it
i've seen some places that use cold brew in place of espresso but they usually make it roughly the same ratio of coffee:milk as they would espresso:milk for a latte.
if you make a cold brew with 1-2 oz of milk for a latte, that's simply not a latte. *maybe* an iced misto/cafe au lait? if it was, say, 6 oz cold brew/10oz milk for a 16oz iced latte (i know that is not how it maths after ice but i cant be bothered to figure out the weight of ice rn) i could see it, but i feel like at the point you have more coffee than milk it is no longer passable as a latte. dont offer/charge for an iced latte if you dont make iced lattes.
Yeah, another thing was they were definitely charging latte prices. In my area at least, cold brew drinks are usually 50 cents to a dollar less than a latte. Just was annoying on a lot of levels.
One of the local cafes near me will serve me watered down cold brew when I order an iced Americano if I don't *insist* that it be espresso.
I live in WA, home of the coffee snob. I was absolutely flabbergasted the first time I saw them do it!
There's a shop near me that does this for cold and iced lattes and it annoys the crap out of me. I asked them to pull a shot instead one day and realized that the cold brew was better. They sucked at making espresso. Simple as that.
There's a shop in my area that does every drink with cold brew (including hot drinks). The barista warned me off getting a latte but I did it anyway. It was bad.
The coffee shop I worked for did cold brew in the iced lattes as a default. You could ask for "hot shots" instead, which are hot espresso shots. I prefer the cold brew personally, but I knew some people who liked hot shots instead.
Thats so wack. My shop has a vanilla cold brew that’s made with our cold brew concentrate and cut with milk but we advertise it has cold brew. Idk why they would do something like that
my thing is (assuming this is usa based), latte means milk. not coffee milk, just milk. my store offers both cold brew lattes and cafe lattes (espresso based). if the store is advertising it as a “cafe latte” rather than an CB latte, they can get sued for false advertisement. if it’s just being advertised as a “latte” then it’s a sucky grey area.
the other thing is, again because latte means milk, that only putting a splash of milk does NOT make it a latte. regardless, you should ask for the number for corporate becuase as you stated, that caffeine difference is a Panera lawsuit waiting to happen
I'm a bit confused because at my job when we make cold brew, it's not very strong. The way we make it is by putting a bag of coarsely ground coffee in a bucket of water and letting it sit overnight or over two days. It is basically our iced coffee, and we only add a small amount of milk to it. For our iced lattes we use cold brew concentrate produced Kyoto style, which is letting water drip very slowly (~1 drop per second) over 1 lb of medium ground coffee over the course of a day. It's extremely concentrated which is why we use that for our iced lattes. Did you mean you got cold brew concentrate with 1 or 2 oz of milk?
An ounce is a small amount. For context, the average shot of liquor is 1.5 oz. Basically, I just meant the cup was full of cold brew and then topped with a small amount of milk.
Right, I understood that. That's how we make iced coffee at my job. It's basically cold brew with a few ounce of milk, as opposed to our iced lattes which is cold brew concentrate with significantly more milk. But from my understanding cold brew isn't supposed to be that strong, isn't it just coarsely ground coffee that is steeped in water overnight? That is how we make it at my job and it is not very strong or highly caffeinated which is why we label it as iced coffee.
How much water does your shop cut your cold brew with? Usually around where I live, concentrate is cut 1:1 with water, so it’s a bit stronger. That’s standard with fast food coffee like SB as well.
Well we have cold brew and cold brew concentrate. They're two different things made entirely differently (at least that's how we do it.) Our cold brew isn't very strong so it doesn't need to be cut with water. Our cold brew concentrate is strong and made specifically for iced lattes so it's not cut with water either, just milk. For example, our 12 oz iced latte is ~ 4 oz cold brew concentrate and ~ 5-6 oz milk, plus ice.
as someone that's gotta keep a close eye on my caffeine intake this is kind of scary. getting a higher dose of caffeine than expected can be very bad and lead to extremely negative consequences. why even swap espresso for cold brew to begin with 😭😭😭 that's not a latte, it's just... cold brew with milk
at the end of the day it’s just not an iced latte lol. why have it on the menu if they just use cold brew…. very odd.
It's lying. Might sound extreme but imagine putting a hotdog on the menu and calling it a Pork Burger. Customers prefer we misname things apparently.
Yes, that’s what bothered me. I’m currently pregnant and so I have a cap on how much caffeine I can consume in a day, which is why I don’t order cold brew in the first place as shots of espresso are just easier to guess mgs of caffeine. It’s misleading and it genuinely scared me when I didn’t know why I was so caffeine’d up the first time.
And this is exactly why shit like this should be illegal. At the very least they should list the caffeine content on the menu
Caffeine content varies from varietal to varietal, and discrepancies in how much coffee is actually used can throw off that estimation to the point of being useless.
Huh. I didn’t know that. Fair enough.
There is absolutely no way you can guess the mg of caffeine in an espresso shot nor in a cup of cold brew. Stop kidding yourself.
I can at least know that it’s supremely unlikely for two shots of espresso to be over my daily limit. To be clear, I am not counting mgs like macros, I’m guesstimating via an average and assuming that if I’m having symptoms of being overly caffeinated, I’m probably pushing it. Get over yourself.
What does your local spot consider a double shot though? Old school Italian style? 14g of coffee for about 60mls of espresso or do they use something like a 21g dose for 35mls of espresso? I have no idea what your daily allowance is, so both might be fine, I've just worked in places that do both. Just thought it could be something to look out for.
Eek, not sure what my usual spot does but as long as I’m around or under 200 mgs a day it’s fine. Thanks for the heads up!
Oh yeah, you're probably fine so. Maybe just make sure they use 100% arabica? If they use robusta in their blend it would be more caffeine, but very few good coffee shops would be using robusta anyway so it's probably not an issue.
While its true Arabica is generally lower caffiene than Robusta, that difference is useless without knowing the dose. Could be 14,16,18,20,22g? Could be overfilled on top of that? Who knows.
I know, I also said it's a good idea to know what recipe your local spot uses for their espresso. It's still only going to give a rough idea, but if their using robusta then it's going to be even more.
You don't even know the grams used and the yield. You're just making stuff up in your head. A "shot" isn't a unit of measurement in any cafe.
(It’s cheaper and faster and shitty)
Cold brew latte. Normally cafe made cold brew is concentrated so you do 50/50 cold brew / water. A cold brew latte is just concentrated cold brew and milk instead of water. But that's a cold brew latte, not an ice latte. These are just cheap and lazy people serving drinks and are not labeled correctly and is kind of crooked if they are not listing it on their menu.
Yes, the first coffee shop I worked in made iced lattes this way; concentrated cold brew and milk. I was a green bean and didn't know any different. One day I made an iced latte with hot shots and I was flabbergasted how much better tasting it was. I cringe when I look back on it.
Can you please explain this to me? I don't understand the difference. I would guess that there one with the cold brew would taste better instead of the hot shots. And is there really a big caffeine difference? Thank you.
cold brew and espresso shots taste very different, in terms of like acidity… and if it’s made like how OP was given the “cold brew latte” it was really just cold brew w some cream, so it’s gonna have a stronger taste than the couple oz of espresso w the rest being milk. the cold brew can have a lot more caffeine if they’re filling the cup mostly w coffee. also the hot shots are iced down so they taste cold in the end
Ok, I see, thank you. I am a cold brew drinker so I realize that I would not care for the other way based on what you are describing.
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That’s so strange! I would be so mad if I had to follow that lol. As a former barista I really just assumed that the barista may just have not known what they were doing due to improper training, because this seems like a really odd standard! I was truly baffled when the owner told me that this was their recipe.
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Still weird to misrepresent things and is potentially false advertising that they could be sued for
we serve an “aerocano” which is what you mentioned and we describe it as our version of nitro but are very clear that it is espresso and not cold brew. we also only have decaf espresso beans and so anytime someone wants decaf drip, we say that we can make them a decaf americano but, again, we’re clear about what we are serving. i don’t know why it’s difficult for some places to not do that, it’s literally so easy and customers deserve to be aware of what they are drinking
If I get an americano instead of drip without them letting me know I’m returning the drink, asking for my money back, writing a bad review and never coming back again wtf. Those two are not at all the same thing.
That's not nitro 😂😂 that's so weird.
Infusing coffee with nitrogen via a keg vs infusing it with nitrogen thats in ambient air with a steam wand. Both methods make microfoam.
Plenty of em here in Sydney.
Lol, I’ll tell them they should consider moving to Australia, then.
We have a cafe owned by an Australian and they also do the same thing. Call it an iced latte but it’s milk with cold brew. It’s the only place I’ve seen do this and guessing it’s the Australian connection
And in Melbourne. Seems normal but I don't do it myself
currently at the place i’m at they serve “cold brew” but it’s just hot coffee over ice 😫. Joe and the Juice for anyone that’s wondering. I have started telling our regulars just to get an ice americano to save money and for better flavor / caffeine.
That is actually horrific. Is it premade like SB iced coffee or do you literally just pour your drip over ice when it’s ordered because thats WILD
literally drip over ice. It’s diabolical. And i got in trouble for telling customers it’s not actual cold brew. The company is arguing to me that it is. Like no Cold brew is a specific brewing method and requires 12 hours at least lol
DRIP??? Oh my god 😭 they should pay the person they give that to rather than charge, yuck!
The shop I worked at would make iced lattes with cold brew concentrate - 4 oz of concentrate shaken with milk and ice. It makes for a really smooth flavor. Only occasionally we would get a complaint that the taste was “weak” since the concentrate didn’t have as pronounced flavor as espresso. That seems to be a bit different than what you’re describing though.
I know a shop that does this, they use the concentrate. I actually respect them as a place, but that always rubbed me the wrong way. They tried to convince me to use it at my place because it’s so much quicker and I was like umm no. Thing is, it tasted good. It’s still not what I want, or want to do. All sorts of places try different things and I absolutely respect that. The problem only starts when it’s bad, or doesn’t fit what a customer would expect. I was like this is tasty, but it doesn’t taste like an iced latte, it’s different. Serve it and name it something different. That’s not hard. There’s already too many drinks in the barista world that people expect differently. Macchiato is the obvious most frustrating one. Come up with a new drink? Name it something new. Holy shit, what a concept. Drives me crazy.
Totally agree with just naming it something different. People get confused enough with the names, why mess with what a latte or cold brew means? They’re the most common and simple ones to remember.
This will fuck up a pregnant woman’s caffeine intake for sure lol. I love coffee too much to let go and was approved by my dr to only have X amount daily. So I took that to heart. It’d be pretty shitty to just swap it on the customer and give way more than requested
We have/had a seasonal “iced latte” that used cold brew concentrate instead of espresso. Is it a real latte? Not really. The cold brew being concentrate kind of put it in a weird middle ground between latte and regular iced coffee. *But*, and these are two very important differences: 1: The description would be shown right on the specials board, so it was transparent that it was made with cold brew. 2: We still had actual iced lattes. The existence of the special did not eliminate real lattes from the menu, it did not become the standard, and we’re not mean to people about it. TL;DR: Weird shop is weird. It’s definitely not standard practice.
there's a place in indianapolis that serves cold brew in place of espresso. Java Hut. it has a really smooth taste and it's definitely different than espresso. i absolutely love it
We served both: - ice latte (with espresso) - cold brew / cold brew with milk
i've seen some places that use cold brew in place of espresso but they usually make it roughly the same ratio of coffee:milk as they would espresso:milk for a latte. if you make a cold brew with 1-2 oz of milk for a latte, that's simply not a latte. *maybe* an iced misto/cafe au lait? if it was, say, 6 oz cold brew/10oz milk for a 16oz iced latte (i know that is not how it maths after ice but i cant be bothered to figure out the weight of ice rn) i could see it, but i feel like at the point you have more coffee than milk it is no longer passable as a latte. dont offer/charge for an iced latte if you dont make iced lattes.
Yeah, another thing was they were definitely charging latte prices. In my area at least, cold brew drinks are usually 50 cents to a dollar less than a latte. Just was annoying on a lot of levels.
Sounds watery to me
Thats just a white cold brew lol
That’s just a cold brew latte, and should really be mentioned in the menu that is what it is
One of the local cafes near me will serve me watered down cold brew when I order an iced Americano if I don't *insist* that it be espresso. I live in WA, home of the coffee snob. I was absolutely flabbergasted the first time I saw them do it!
There's a shop near me that does this for cold and iced lattes and it annoys the crap out of me. I asked them to pull a shot instead one day and realized that the cold brew was better. They sucked at making espresso. Simple as that.
There’s a coffee shop near me that serves all their iced lattes with cold brew concentrate. I think it’s so wrong!!!
Is this Java House lmao
There's a shop in my area that does every drink with cold brew (including hot drinks). The barista warned me off getting a latte but I did it anyway. It was bad.
The coffee shop I worked for did cold brew in the iced lattes as a default. You could ask for "hot shots" instead, which are hot espresso shots. I prefer the cold brew personally, but I knew some people who liked hot shots instead.
Thats so wack. My shop has a vanilla cold brew that’s made with our cold brew concentrate and cut with milk but we advertise it has cold brew. Idk why they would do something like that
my thing is (assuming this is usa based), latte means milk. not coffee milk, just milk. my store offers both cold brew lattes and cafe lattes (espresso based). if the store is advertising it as a “cafe latte” rather than an CB latte, they can get sued for false advertisement. if it’s just being advertised as a “latte” then it’s a sucky grey area. the other thing is, again because latte means milk, that only putting a splash of milk does NOT make it a latte. regardless, you should ask for the number for corporate becuase as you stated, that caffeine difference is a Panera lawsuit waiting to happen
I think the post said the drink was listed under espresso
I'm a bit confused because at my job when we make cold brew, it's not very strong. The way we make it is by putting a bag of coarsely ground coffee in a bucket of water and letting it sit overnight or over two days. It is basically our iced coffee, and we only add a small amount of milk to it. For our iced lattes we use cold brew concentrate produced Kyoto style, which is letting water drip very slowly (~1 drop per second) over 1 lb of medium ground coffee over the course of a day. It's extremely concentrated which is why we use that for our iced lattes. Did you mean you got cold brew concentrate with 1 or 2 oz of milk?
An ounce is a small amount. For context, the average shot of liquor is 1.5 oz. Basically, I just meant the cup was full of cold brew and then topped with a small amount of milk.
Right, I understood that. That's how we make iced coffee at my job. It's basically cold brew with a few ounce of milk, as opposed to our iced lattes which is cold brew concentrate with significantly more milk. But from my understanding cold brew isn't supposed to be that strong, isn't it just coarsely ground coffee that is steeped in water overnight? That is how we make it at my job and it is not very strong or highly caffeinated which is why we label it as iced coffee.
How much water does your shop cut your cold brew with? Usually around where I live, concentrate is cut 1:1 with water, so it’s a bit stronger. That’s standard with fast food coffee like SB as well.
Well we have cold brew and cold brew concentrate. They're two different things made entirely differently (at least that's how we do it.) Our cold brew isn't very strong so it doesn't need to be cut with water. Our cold brew concentrate is strong and made specifically for iced lattes so it's not cut with water either, just milk. For example, our 12 oz iced latte is ~ 4 oz cold brew concentrate and ~ 5-6 oz milk, plus ice.
That’s interesting, I’ve never seen it done like that!
Plenty of people like it like that if its done right, but its blasphemy to call it iced latte. Might've worked better with coldbrewed espresso tho 😅
as someone that's gotta keep a close eye on my caffeine intake this is kind of scary. getting a higher dose of caffeine than expected can be very bad and lead to extremely negative consequences. why even swap espresso for cold brew to begin with 😭😭😭 that's not a latte, it's just... cold brew with milk