Coffee Review: Havana Cappuccino – Mocha Cappuccino

This actually started out as a simple trip to the local Dollar Tree store in town to pick up a couple of things. When I wandered the isles to make sure I didn't forget something I needed for the house, I came across this can of Havana Cappuccino – Mocha Cappuccino flavored premium coffee drink. Having never seen it before, I was quickly fascinated and couldn't help the thought of “Well I haven't done a coffee review in a while. This should be interesting”. So of course I purchased it and promptly took it home to stick in the fridge to get it chilled.

I know that most of my readers aren't much into the concept of a cold coffee but I know that there are enough of you out there who would be interested so this is directed towards you. Once chilled, the powerful aroma similar to sticking my nose into a bottle of chocolate syrup greeted my nostrils. Not too sure if I was ready for that which seems silly since the can clearly states that it's supposed to be mocha flavored. Taking a sip, I can already tell that I'm going to be having problems with this. Instead of the smooth coffee flavor with perhaps a hint of chocolate tones that would entertain my taste buds, my mouth was greeted by something that would be described as what seemed to be chocolate milk in a can. At best it was more as if I was consuming a generic version of a bottle of Yoo-hoo (for those not familiar with Yoo-hoo, it is a chocolate flavored drink which was supposed to resemble chocolate milk and be 'healthy'). The liquid passing my lips was sweet and though relatively thin in consistency had rich almost overwhelming flavor of chocolate with its fruity tones. There is no hint of coffee flavor anywhere in this, not even in after taste. I thought that perhaps it was just my initial taste so took another drink before offering some to my boyfriend. Much to my surprise (and perhaps relief) he was in complete agreement with me in how it tasted which was a bit comforting to know that I wasn't loosing my mind.

Setting the can aside, I thought that I would go ahead and take a look at the company who made it. Havana Cappuccino is supposedly made by the Havana Cappuccino Company in New Jersey. I say supposedly due to the fact that the website they have listed on the can leads me to a blank page. Even going as far as looking at the online Yellow Pages, I found absolutely nothing. The website ends up displaying "No results for Havana cappuccino company in Ocean City, NJ " .  It took me a bit of time but I actually had to find the company on Facebook where they're statement is “Havana Cappuccino has style, taste and sophistication. It has it all!”. From looking at the posts that other visitors have left, it would appear that there is a small following for the product and many of the people report that they had also found the 'coffee' drink at the Dollar Tree. 

I do realize that there are people out there that prefer a coffee based beverage to not be very strong on the flavor of coffee due to its often bitter quality so they may or may not enjoy this change of base in the genre of flavored coffee drinks. Personally I find myself not quite a fan of this particular product. If I step back and not think of it as coffee but as perhaps a chocolate milkshake in a small convenient container then I have no problem with it because that is pretty much what it seems to be. But alas, as a coffee based product it doesn't register very high on my “Oh my god I absolutely need this right now” list because of that lack of coffee flavor. I totally understand it's a matter of personal taste but my opinion may not be like someone else who tries it out as well. Another problem that I have is the fact that there is absolutely no information on the company itself save for a Facebook page but even with that, there's no information about the company stated. Perhaps I'm just being a little paranoid and this is actually a tiny company but at the same time I have a hard time accepting a small business wouldn't have some kind of information about themselves somewhere on the internet for consumers to find out more about them and the products they create. The third problem that I have with this particular product is the ingredients list on the side of the can. Almost all of the various coffee drinks I've come across is normally has listed coffee, milk, sugar and perhaps whatever flavoring that they have for it. This is what is listed for this particular product:

Ingredients: Brewed Coffee, Milk, Sugar (Sucrose), Cocoa (Processed with Alkali), Disodium Phosphate, Natural & Artificial Flavors, Carrageenan, and Potassium Hydroxide

I think I'll leave it up to the choice of my readers if they would want to try this one out or not but it's not going to be something that I'm going to go out of my way to recommend to people.