Pepsi Max Coffee Cino

Once again I find myself drifting away from chocolate, but considering that I’m posting this at 6am, I’m sure you can forgive me for not being in quite the mood for chocolate just yet.

What I have had though, is some Pepsi, and not just any Pepsi, it’s COFFEE Pepsi! Now I’m sure that this is no longer a new thing to most people, if you haven’t heard of it up until now, then you may have heard of Coke Blak, Coca-Cola’s answer to Pepsi’s coffee variant.

I’ll start from the beginning, Pepsi Max is a sugar free form of Pepsi that we have over here in the United Kingdom. What confuses me is that we also have Diet Pepsi, so I can only assume that Diet Pepsi is for women, and Pepsi Max is for men. Pepsi Max was introduced here in April 1993. So I find it quite funny that it’s taken Coca-Cola 14 years to follow Pepsi with their ‘manly’ soft drink; Coke Zero.

They call it Coffee Cino, I’m not sure what the Cino part of this means, I’ve heard of Cappuccino, Moccacino, and Frappuccino, but never Coffee Cino. I’m willing to let this slide though, because it doesn’t actually taste like coffee.

What it does taste like, is sweet and caramelly. If I were to drink this blindfolded I don’t think I’d be able to pick up any hints of coffee at all, it’s that tame. I can understand why this drink hasn’t hit off too much here in the UK, for one I found a lot of negativity when it came to the fusion of a soft drink and coffee. Most people seemed to find this quite repulsive, no matter what the taste may be like. As mentioned earlier, it is very sweet and so this would no doubt put a lot of people off.

Of course it contains 0 calories, no sugar and all the other attributes of a diet soft drink, but with it being so sweet, you almost have to question this. Looking at the ingredients, the artificial sweetners (Aspartame and Acesulfame K) are actually about halfway down the list, so it must be the caramel flavourings, which are listed second (above the coffee flavourings, funnily enough), that give it the sweetness.

Regardless, I think this is a very tasty drink. There seems to almost be a social stigma around it, I know the till operator gave me a funny look when I bought the two six packs (£2.29 each, but they were BOGOF at Sainsbury’s), though I did also buy 20 tins of tuna at the same time, so she no doubt thought I had some sort of strange experiment planned. I do recommend this if you’re a fan of coffee and/or caramel, if it’s not on offer then I wouldn’t get it, as for me this was an impulsive buy. But with 0 calories, carbs, sugars, etc and a pleasant taste, it certainly makes a difference when all you normally drink is water.