Pabst Blue Ribbon Hard Cold Brew Review

Pabst Blue Ribbon Hard Cold Brew offers a unique way to get your daily caffeine fix as a boozy canned coffee. It’s well-priced and only slightly sweet with the overall quality that stands up to others on the market, but as a coffee-based beverage, it may have limited occasions where it would be a genuinely good fit.

Tasting Notes

Color: Pours an opaque dark coffee brown in the glass with absolutely zero head or light crema top forming.

Nose: There’s no mistaking that this is first and foremost a coffee beverage. Aromas of espresso and drip coffee mix with hints of melted baking chocolate but are also tinged with a touch of newspaper-y staleness that packaged coffee drinks tend to have.

Palate: The texture is surprisingly rich and full, like a cup of cold brew cut with a touch of cream and plenty of sugar. The sweetness comes through prominently and veers on cloying but works with the rich coffee flavors and hints of cocoa and makes it reminiscent of coffee liqueurs. A lack of carbonation makes it pleasantly smooth.

Finish: Coffee aromatics sing through the finish while a chocolate sweetness lingers long on the tongue long after. Unlike many cold brews, there’s not even a hint of an overly acidic finish.

Our Review

Pabst Brewing is a company that has almost seen as much happen in the last decade and a half of its existence as it did in the previous 180 years that preceded it. After peaking at the number three best-selling beer in the U.S. in 1980, the brand fell on hard times as CEOs shuffled through the company before shuttering their Milwaukee headquarters in 1996. After a successful reinvention of the brand, Pabst Blue Ribbon—or PBR for short—experienced a famous resurgence in the early 2000s as the go-to beer for the hipster or budget-conscious set. Such successes have allowed the brand to continue to reinvent itself, offering new beverages including the Pabst Blue Ribbon Hard Cold Brew.

Unlike the light, approachable, cheap lager that most associate with Pabst, Hard Cold Brew offers a completely different drinking experience. As advertised, it’s a canned coffee beverage released by the company to cash in on the ready-to-drink cocktail and hard seltzer trends that have seismically shifted the industry. But in terms of achieving what it sets out to do, this beverage manages to be a relatively enjoyable option that tastes a lot like other popular prepackaged coffee drinks. The major difference here, of course, is that this one clocks in at 4.2% ABV.

The beverage itself somewhat convincingly dupes as a breakfast order at a local cafe might, showcasing deep coffee flavors and rich notes of chocolate that come across as barely more than the “slightly sweet” advertised on the can. As a dairy-free product, it also doesn’t end up with the thick milkshake consistency that many canned or bottled lattes end up having. It’s also still got 35 milligrams of caffeine per can, making it about as strong as a third of a cup of coffee. Still, the cans fall victim to the slightly stale coffee taste that other packaged coffee drinks do, which can push through on the finish when it begins to warm up in your hand.

While this exists as a relatively unique product on the shelf, it’s also somewhat difficult to think of situations when this might be considered a “go-to” beverage option outside of boozy brunches. You could argue that the cold brew itself could be a useful mixer in a cocktail such as an Espresso Martini riff or could make for a good post-dinner drink poured over ice and served alongside dessert. This isn’t to say its novelty doesn’t make it an appropriate purchase for someone, but it does make it a harder argument that there’s something here for everyone to love.

This product is probably the best fit for anyone looking to change up their brunch routine from Mimosas or Bellinis while still getting in their coffee fix. And given its relatively cheap price point, it’s unlikely to be more expensive than a coffee liqueur or the spirits you’d generally buy to mix into a freshly brewed cup. It may be an imperfect shortcut beverage with limited uses, but it still seems to serve a purpose.