Coca-Cola Coffee: Refreshing Carbonated Coffee Now Available in Japan
I don’t know about you, but every time I brew up a pot of coffee I can’t help but wonder what it would taste like if it was fizzy. Now I can find out, as long as I’m willing to go to Kanto in Japan where Coca-Cola Coffee Plus is now for sale. Coming in a small, 190ml can, this mega-caffeinated drink costs 130 yen — about 87p.
Coca-Cola Japan claims this drink has “double the caffeine” of regular Coca-Cola, which isn’t surprising considering, well, it’s Coca-Cola with coffee in it. The main addition for that coffee kick is simple “coffee extract powder”. So it likely tastes more like Coca-Cola with a hint of that bitter coffee taste than a truly horrifying carbonated coffee.
Like the US version of the normal drink, Coca-Cola Coffee Plus is flavoured with high fructose corn syrup, aspartame, and other sweeteners as opposed to regular old sucrose sugar. Which is why the drink just tastes better in Europe.
Coca-Cola Japan produce their own Coca-Cola in their Japanese production plants, using a concentrate beverage as a base that they buy and ship in to the plants. Whether the concentrate is made by another branch in Japan, or is imported in from America, I’m not sure. But they both use fructose corn syrup.
This isn’t actually the first time the Coca-Cola Company has flirted with a coffee flavoured version of its star soda. From mid-2006 to 2008 they experimented with Coca-Cola BlāK. First releasing in France, before spreading to other parts of Europe and the US, the drink didn’t stick around all that long.
For many years now I’ve been having nightmares about carbonated coffee. Hopefully Coca-Cola Gravy is not next on the list of bizarre Coca-Cola ideas.
Coca-Cola Coffee Plus is available in select vending machines in Kanto, Tohoku, and certain areas of Tokai.
