We Tasted Over 30 Canned Coffees to Find the Best
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These are cans we’ll be keeping in our fridge for caffeine convenience.
We at Food & Wine love and appreciate the ritual of waking up, brewing a hot, fresh pot of coffee, and enjoying a cup while doing the crossword. But let’s face it – who has time to do that every day? It’s the 21st century, baby, and we’re constantly on the go.
Luckily, there are dozens of single-serve, ready-to-drink coffee options available around the nation. But with cold brew, nitro coffee, oat milk lattes, mochas, pumpkin spice, and other variations at your disposal, it can be difficult to narrow your choice down to the right can to start off your morning, or get you through a marathon of meetings. To help make the decision a little easier, our editors tasted 31 ready-to-drink coffees and found the best options currently on the market.
Best Daily Drinker: Stumptown Original Cold Brew
Stumptown Coffee Roasters has always been ahead of the cold brew craze. They started serving cold brew at their Portland, Oregon, coffee shops as early as 2007, and by 2010, they were bottling it in cute, now-iconic stubby glass bottles. Most of our editors were fans of all three of Stumptown’s cold brews (including their Original Nitro Cold Brew and extra-strong Hair Bender Nitro), but the Original Cold Brew Coffee really won us over. The flavor, full of dark chocolate and pithy orange notes, satisfied both light and dark roast drinkers. “This is a little black dress of black coffee,” said one editor. “I would never be mad here.”
Coffee type: Cold brew
Volume per can: 10.5 fluid ounces
Sweetened: No
Single-origin: No
Best Packaging: Wandering Bear Cold Brew Straight Black
Wandering Bear is kind of miraculous. Despite the fact that each carton contains an obscene amount of caffeine (equivalent to four shots of espresso), the flavor is smooth, gentle, and somehow refreshing. But what makes this ready-to-drink coffee truly special is its resealable, tetrapak-like packaging, so it’s uniquely easy to take a sip, throw it in a bag, and enjoy it on the go later.
Coffee type: Cold brew
Volume per can: 11 fluid ounces
Sweetened: No
Single-origin: No
Best Bold Brew: Blue Bottle Coffee Bold Cold-Brewed Coffee
Although our editors appreciate light roast coffees, some of the more acidic, fruitier brews reminded us too much of sour beer or kombucha. But this “Bold” Blue Bottle can, full of nutty, caramel, and chocolate flavors, tastes straight up like a good cup of Joe. “It’s immediately recognizable as pure coffee, which seems to be a high bar among canned coffees,” noted one editor. “This is violent in a good way,” added another. Bonus points for the fun-sized can!
Coffee type: Cold brew
Volume per can: 10.5 fluid ounces
Sweetened: No
Single-origin: No
Best Nitro: Sail Away Coffee Nitro Cold Brew Cans
The great thing about nitro coffee (cold brew infused with nitrogen during the brewing process) is its smooth body. Our editors appreciated that Sail Away has a flavor that complements its creamy profile – something akin to chocolate milk or even vanilla ice cream. “A lot of cold brew is too acidic for me, but I really found this one pleasant,” said an editor. “I could do this without milk or sweetener.”
Coffee type: Nitro cold brew
Volume per can: 10.5 fluid ounces
Sweetened: No
Single-origin: No
Best Latte: La Colombe Triple Draft Latte
Here's the problem with canned lattes: They’re usually just too creamy. Even when unflavored, any element of coffee is too often overpowered by thickening agents like gellan gum and acacia and sweeteners such as cane sugar and dates. But La Colombe gets the milk-to-coffee ratio right, and while each can contains three shots worth of caffeine, there’s just enough to let the Brazilian cold brew shine in all its glory. Special shout out to La Colombe’s canned Mocha Latte, another staff favorite, which one editor said “has a real chocolate milk energy to it.”
Coffee type: Latte
Volume per can: 9 fluid ounces
Sweetened: No
Single-origin: Yes
Best Flavored Latte: High Brew Coffee Mexican Vanilla
For people who want something a little different out of their canned coffee experience, High Brew’s Mexican Vanilla coffee offers a touch of cinnamon and just the right amount of vanilla sweetness to create a balanced, extremely tasty latte. Compared to other flavored lattes, this drink has the perfect level of viscosity. One editor mentioned, “I like the weight of this on the palate.”
Coffee type: Flavored Latte
Volume per can: 8 fluid ounces
Sweetened: Yes
Single-origin: No
Best Alternative Milk Latte: Nguyen Coffee Supply Cold Brew Coffee with Coconut Milk
We have to be honest…the Food & Wine team really struggled with most of the non-dairy milk lattes. Even though most of us love a good splash of oat milk in drip coffee or, say, a cortado, we found that when canned, alternative milks proved too creamy and astringent and ultimately clashed with the coffee. Enter coconut milk, the perfect flavor enhancer. Nguyen Coffee Supply’s ultra-strong Vietnamese coffee holds its own when combined with coconut milk, which provides a subtle coconut flavor, a touch of creaminess, and a natural sweetness. Don’t sleep on Nguyen’s condensed milk latte, either.
Coffee type: Non-Dairy Latte
Volume per can: 7.5 fluid ounces
Sweetened: Yes
Single-origin: Yes
Best Alternative Milk Flavored Latte: Taika Macadamia Milk Mocha Latte + Adaptogens
The use of house-made macadamia milk in ready-to-drink coffee was another pleasant surprise. Its mild flavor really allowed the premium Guittard cocoa in this can to shine. “The macadamia milk is not overpowering,” said an editor. “There’s a good balance of sweetness, chocolate notes, and coffee.” That cocoa is so good that you can’t even notice the added ashwagandha, lion’s mane, and cordyceps (gasp!).
Coffee type: Non-Dairy Flavored Latte
Volume per can: 8 fluid ounces
Sweetened: Yes
Single-origin: No
Related: We Tasted as Many Fall Beers as We Could Find — Here Are Our Favorites
Our Taste Test Process
Several Food & Wine editors participated in this taste test. We selected and considered 14 black cold brews and 17 lattes that were ready-to-drink, single-serve, and accessible nationwide. We tasted each beverage in plastic cups, one at a time, and evaluated them based on first impressions, flavor, viscosity, and overall drinkability. Ice was available to add to the beverage, but every taste tester opted against it. Each editor rated the ready-to-drink coffees on a scale of one to five according to our three attributes. The highest average scores determined which coffees were included in this list, in addition to our tasters' subjective comments. Everyone has their own coffee preferences, so we encourage you to try a variety of these ready-to-drink coffees and form your own opinions.
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