Coca-Cola Has Just Launched a Coffee Flavour and Australians Are Going Crazy

Coca-Cola Plus Coffee No Sugar is a limited-edition caffeinated beverage that was launched in Japan as a trial run for the big launch in Australia at the end of September 2017. In Japan, it was sold in vending machines as regular Coca-Cola with coffee; the sugar-free version is only available in Australia.

A spokeswoman for Coca-Cola explained that Coca-Cola Plus Coffee No Sugar was created with the Australian love of coffee in mind. The highly successful Coca-Cola Ginger, launched in October 2016, stemmed from market research that showed a significant number of Australians like drinking beverages with ginger in them. Australia has long been considered a nation of coffee-drinkers and Coca-Cola have decided to try and tap into this market.

Coca-Cola have described the drink as having the taste of traditional Coca-Cola, with ‘a dash of real coffee from Brazil’ and a ‘subtle caramel undertone’. The feedback from the market has been mixed. Shin Shouhin, a news site in Japan, reported that, ‘it is not a very tasty fragrance’, adding that it has a ‘curious’ and ‘strange’ aroma and the taste is like Coca-Cola with an aftertaste of coffee. ‘I didn’t think it tasted good’, reported the article, ‘but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be’.

This isn’t the first time Coca-Cola have experimented with coffee-flavoured drinks. In 2006, they launched Coca-Cola BlāK in the US and in Europe, but it was later discontinued in 2008. It was criticised for its taste that failed to balance the flavour of Coca-Cola and coffee and for its unpleasing packaging; it was also in competition with other energy drinks in the market at that time.

A can of Coca-Cola Plus Coffee No Sugar is just 190ml (6.4oz), while a regular-sized can is 355ml (12oz); it contains 14mg of caffeine per 100ml, compared to 9mg per 100ml in a regular Coca-Cola. It has fewer calories, with just 42 calories per can, compared to the 140 calories in a regular can. The amount of caffeine still doesn’t compare to a regular coffee. You would need to drink two Coca-Cola Plus Coffee No Sugars to get almost the same caffeine kick as a single-shot latte, which contains around 77mg of caffeine.

For its size, this new drink has a high quantity of caffeine, but it is far from the most caffeinated beverage on the market. A regular can of Diet Coke, for example, contains 46mg of caffeine. One of the most caffeinated drinks on the market is Jolt Cola, which is making a comeback this year. With a slogan declaring, ‘All the sugar and twice the caffeine’, it was first released in 1985 with 160mg of caffeine in a 473ml (16oz) bottle. A bottle of regular Coca-Cola of the same size contains 45mg of caffeine. It was relaunched in September this year.

The coffee flavour of the beverage was sourced from 100% Brazilian coffee beans, but there are as yet no plans for Coca-Cola Plus Coffee No Sugar to be rolled out in Brazil.

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