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Born-in-Philly coffee innovators La Colombe unleashed some exciting news today:
March 1, 2016 is the official release date of La Colombe's canned Draft Lattes, a revolutionary concept unlike anything that currently exists in the portable craft coffee market (they're looking at you, Starbucks effin' Frappuccino, with your 31g of sugar).
As La Colombe's co-founder and latte mastermind Todd Carmichael explains it, the Draft Latte currently available from the tap at La Colombe, as well as Di Bruno Bros. in Rittenhouse, is concocted by pressurizing nitrous oxide into a liquid in the milk, which, when released, transforms into a billion tiny bubbles suspended in the drink. The result is a frothy, creamy latte, poured right from the tap. In the can's case, it's the same concept, except by way of the InnovalveTM, an engineered valve hidden underneath a sticker on the bottom of the can which allows a specialized machine to pump the gas directly into the base (cold-pressed espresso and ~2% milk from, as Carmichael puts it, "happy cows, like the ones I grew up with."), pressure and all, so that once the can is cracked open and pressure released: voila! The same frothy, creamy latte, this time in a single can or four-pack (with a 180 day shelf-life).
Not only that, but expect different flavors; to start, vanilla and mocha — Carmichael says, "It tastes like chocolate cake." Different flavors will be differentiated by color-coded lip guards (removable) atop the cans, to help with flow and mouthfeel, as well as putting the germaphobes at ease.
"I think we attribute certain things to certain mouthfeels, and that pillowy mouthfeel, there's a luxury to it. It makes people happy, and we're in the business of making people happy with coffee," says Carmichael. And Philly comes first; come March 1, the lattes will be available at select La Colombes in Philly, as well as online. And after that?
"The world."
