Spend any appreciable amount of time in the dairy aisle of your local grocery store, and you’ll notice that cold brew coffee is a Big Thing. There’s cold brew from Texas, cans of lattes from Philadelphia brew houses, there’s concentrate, premade, and some with little gadgets on the bottle so that you can squeeze out the “perfect portion.” There’s also Starbucks, but not actually their cold brew, that’s unrefrigerated around the corner and what’s in the dairy aisle is just cold coffee? Starbucks has issues, y’all.
Before I started brewing my own cold brew, but after my wife and I decided that our weekly growler from the local coffee shop was too expensive, we came across Chameleon Cold Brew Coffee. Initially just offering a few varieties of cold brew concentrate, we discovered that it was an inexpensive way to maintain our cold brew habit and still get tasty, smooth coffee.
Chameleon now offers three different kinds of cold brew – from unadorned original, to vanilla, to mocha. My wife is partial to turning the vanilla variety into lattes; it’s thankfully not too sweet, so it mixes easily with a bit of almond milk and ice.
But they also have pre-mixed! I was a bit wary at first, because when I do use our Chameleon stash (with plenty of side-eye from my SO), I tend to go heavy on the cold brew and light on the water. These pre-mixed versions weren’t exactly the cold brew-heavy ratio I use; but they were closer than I expected. They also had more varieties! In addition to original, mocha, and vanilla, there’s Mexican Coffee, which adds an appreciable amount of cinnamon flavor with a subtle (maybe too subtle) touch of almond, and Espresso, which packs a nice punch for when normal coffee won’t get the job done.
There are also new concentrate flavors sneaking out into the wild, but I haven’t come across Caramel or Texas Pecan yet, so I’m not sure how they stack up to the originals. I’m particularly interested in Texas Pecan, since that’s not a flavor you normally see. Given the company’s Texas origins, it’s nice to see them putting a local recipe out into the wild. After all, if New Orleans can make coffee and chicory a thing, why not Texas pecan?
I’ve tried out just about every pre-made coffee on the shelves and Chameleon is still the one I reach for every time I’m doing my weekly shop. If you’re a coffee lover and haven’t taken the plunge into cold brew coffee yet, I highly recommend grabbing a bottle of Chameleon concentrate and giving it a week. If you’re not ready for that kind of commitment, pick up a pre-mixed bottle and try it out. It’s smoother than your typical iced coffee and packs the same wallop (if not a little bit more). You can find Chameleon Cold Brew Coffee in the dairy case next to the milk. If you want to read more about them and check out some fun cold brew recipes, head over to their website.
Thanks to Chameleon Cold Brew for providing samples for this review. Opinions and over-caffeinated jitters are my own.
