what is the best japanese canned coffee

wait "dark" not black

http://blog-imgs-79.fc2.com/s/e/t/setsuhou/20150224premium.jpg

i assume everyone's seen these but

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8ZRHjC5wGI

my fav is Boss 'Cafe Au Lait'; the cold cans during summer are especially refreshing. I think they're all p much the same basal liquid concentrate regardless of brand name, just w/ varying amounts of pseudo-milk/sugar. you're not supposed to drink them from a glass though I'm p sure, at least I've never seen anybody do that ... str8 from the can puffing on a cig while lurking outside somewhere appears to be the optimal conditions for fake coffee imbibition judging by my cursory field observations

I'm not a coffee head tbh but I've heard people complain that while the most innovative contemporary espresso machine technology is coming out of Japan the domestic espresso "scene" or whatever is somewhat lacking compared to Europe and Australia ... perhaps you know about this dylannn?

i have more to say but first
i just poured it into a glass to give an idea of color etc.

hi missingNO

yeah ofc ... guess I'm just wondering to what extent drinking from glass might overdetermine the taste of 'canned' coffee ... anyway please elucidate further, greatly appreciate yr crucial research itt

*pulls up a chair, sips canned coffee, nods to clouds*

hey

you guys buddies or something?

we are ilx japanophile bros and also haven't seen him post in years

love to read about cof

my spouse says mr. brown's

mr brown is taiwanese

admittedly my spouse is not an expert on asian canned coffee

Sup Dylan! You da man!

When in Nippon, I prefer Boss or Doutor

Visiting 3rd wave shops is always fun

Personal taste leans toward latte, unsweetened

Doutor invites that coffee relationship, which is nice

Yes, they all taste the same, basically like cans of nescafe. Canned milk tea has a much better variety of flavours, I like wheat flavour best I guess. Also seen one with a mix of tea and coffee but not going to touch that abomination.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7h-21Mc5cIw

ジョージアCM MAX COFFEE 『HUMAN CAR RACE』篇

http://i.imgur.com/mfnBh8u.jpg

DOUTOUR CAFE AU LAIT / MY RATING: *

ingredients are: milk, sugar, coffee, fat free powdered milk, powdered milk, some chemicals, modified milk ingredients, artificial flavoring.... it tastes like a gas station protein drink, like muscle milk mocha blast or something, dusty whey and artificial flavoring.

http://i.imgur.com/psnpGVM.jpg

BOSS WORLD COLLECTION COLOMBIA / MY RATING: **

only the finest colombian beans, ground and roasted to produce boss's world collection colombia. less sweet than other canned coffee? still tastes like a kit kat mocha.

xpost: that background is mysteriously suggestive :-/

http://i.imgur.com/Z0zoZtV.jpg

GEORGIA MAX COFFEE / MY RATING: *

i drank this in the basement of a sort of mall below ueno station, down ameyoko. the only time i go to drink coffee, it's usually at ameyoko, one of the coffee shops across from the station that i guess you could call kissaten but maybe they're cafes or just coffee shops-- i feel like the difference was explained to me once and i believe it had something to do with smoking? but like lots of the finer points of DEEP JAPANESE CULTURE, i might have missed the point or it might be bullshit, or maybe the difference had something to do with food being served, but again, i think i've smoked and eaten food in coffee shops and cafes and kissaten, but anyways. if you've never been to ueno and the ameyoko side... ueno station, all around it, it's kind of a commuter hub and sort of the first taste you get of the old city, the low city, or the last taste if, like me, you commute into the city, pop up at ginza or kasumigaseki or somewhere. there's the museums, the park, and if you wander away from the station, you're in the REAL TOKYO, DEEP JAPANESE CULTURE part of town, you could wander to nippori, yanesen, asakusa, iriya, and you could wander even further to less gentrified shitamachi neighborhoods, hour or so walk and you could be across the river to mukojima, right under the skytree, or you could get up to sanya and minowa. ameyoko is kind of a tourist trap now, i guess, and i love DEEP JAPANESE CULTURE shotengai like (near enough to ueno) joyful minowa, jujo ginza shotengai, irohakai shotengai at sanya, but they're dead zones, even the most vital shotengai run to 40-50% abandoned unless there's some anchor property like a shopping mall or a 100 yen store and those places always feel like the most lively. so, whatever ameyoko, it's going to be full of tourists, especially on a sunny day in june but on a cold morning in late october, it's pretty dead. but anyways, i'll go there in the morning, when i'm on my way into the city because the only coffee option near where i work are places with french names on gaienhigashi dori or starbucks. the coffee places in ameyoko, very old fashioned, i guess, in that they're like most of tokyo trapped in like 1986? no espresso but you can get pourover, actually, and i usually just get iced coffee and i actually drink it with syrup and milk, so i should be more into GEORGIA MAX COFFEE but i'm not. ameyoko is lively, ugly. even it's a sunday today, it's noisy and the train runs right through it and you see it reflected in the dark glass four storeys up a hostess club or some shithole irish pub and then it disappears in yellow stucco and grey tile and appears again on more black glass across the upper floors of a pachinko place. in a city that's pretty sedate and homogeneous, ameyoko is a nice break sometimes. i just flew back to japan yesterday and i was in hong kong and across the border in shenzhen and both cities have a certain energy, a certain, you know, they're brash and bright? and hong kong, even in the meaner quarters of the city feels more modern than tokyo does-- in the sense of like, "this is what cities will all look like in a few decades." i always have a crisis coming back to tokyo after going to especially hong kong. i know the problems hong kong has but taking the morningliner from narita to ueno yesterday-- actually, right when you land at the airport, you get this feeling of, like, landing at, i dunno, somewhere that's transitioning from a command economy and stalinist bureaucracy to limited capitalism, all the grey and the dated signage and the weird appeals to appreciate japanese culture (there was this big bank of gashapon with the slogan in large: WHY JAPANESE PEOPLE LIKE THIS! and then a smaller explanatory note: DEEP JAPANESE CULTURE, which is where i got that phrase i've been repeating to myself for the last day), and it just feels like entering a museum, tokyo does, coming in on the train and it's... you've come in from narita before, it's not the most scenic trip, especially after you've done it a dozen times. like a museum to japanese culture, which feels weird, coming from hong kong, which is multicultural and multiethnic and multilingual. girls in hong kong wear shorter skirts than girls in tokyo. or even loud, grimy shenzhen, feels more lively and liveable than tokyo, i think. or more like a place that you could call home. i mostly work with people with east asia and southeast asia who came to tokyo mostly for the opportunities. but i wonder about what appeals to japan for mostly white westerners that come here, all the tourists you see in ameyoko with, like, anime shit on their messenger bags. i think the weird purity of DEEP JAPANESE CULTURE or its imagined purity, if that makes sense, has to be part of the appeal. like, there's that thing about the hopes and dreams visa, japanophiles in their 20s that dream of coming to japan, i never got that at all but i don't want to be too judgemental BUT japanese culture and tokyo itself feels so conservative to me. i mean, i live here and i probably will live here for a while so what am i complaining about but whatever, it comes into focus after visiting a vibrant, politically active, multicultural but still wealthy and sorta democratic city not so far away. but i do appreciate it sometimes, those coffee shops at ueno, where i actually feel sorta unwelcome and everyone else at the bar beside me is at least 50+ years old, it's nice but conservative and museumlike. so, the ueno ameyoko basement is kind of a hopeful place, where you have all these people that have come to tokyo from other countries kind of showing themselves in a way that they don't usually in everyday life, chatting in tagalog, buying groceries, and upstairs, across the road, where i went to get a breakfast of liang'pi, i shared a table with hunanese girls walked over from yushima just off work maybe and eating suanla fen. there's that poem that they have on a piece of iron in front of ueno station: i slip into the crowd at the train station / just to hear the familiar dialect / of my faraway hometown. ameyoko is where the city feels least insular, most international, least grey. anyways, i ate my breakfast and went down to shop, bought a pack of rough ground pork to make lurou fan like i ate the last day i was in shenzhen. there's a spot at the end, under the stairs, where people eat their lunches and there's a few benches and ash trays and an antique empty coke machine and a coffee machine and a cigarette machine. i bought a georgia max coffee and enjoyed it while smoking a cigarette. it tasted the same as every other canned coffee.

http://i.imgur.com/xV166ao.jpg

POKKA COFFEE / MY RATING: ****

this is actually pretty good. ingredients limited to milk, coffee, sugar. tastes like coffee with milk. this is good.

http://i.imgur.com/fVH5HRx.jpg

CRAFT BOSS BLACK / MY RATING: *****

The resulting changes in how people work and take breaks has led to the diversification of the value consumers seek in coffee. These changes are typified by consumers who want coffee nearby during both work and breaks, people who prefer to drink coffee slowly while they work, and people who want to purchase their coffee in the morning and carry it with them all day. Amid such diversification of coffee consumption and desired value, we recognize the rise of a “3rd generation” of coffee consumers who don’t embrace canned or bottle-shaped canned coffee.

this launched at the start of the month and the latte version will enter the market in the middle of june. georgia's cold brew seemed to disappear within a few months of launch and there's a lack of premium canned coffee other than cafe chain-branded offerings. the georgia cold brew black was pretty good but i'd never had cold brew i guess until happening upon in shinagawa station the hundredth tokyo blue bottle outpost. it didn't taste like georgia. if i drink coffee at home, i usually get the liter bottles of dark roast by dydo, which has 3-fpm-like effects and tastes like sae 30. i actually prefer gritty kissaten coffee over ice. that's about what CRAFT BOSS BLACK tastes like. it tastes like medium strength donut shop coffee. it's in a bottle. it provides some of the values i desire in coffee.

like being nearby during both work and breaks

Nice! The question is how will Doutor counter this threat

I still have a modest contribution to make to this thread but how to post an original image on ilx is my Achilles heel. D, what's your process?

imgur link .jpg direct

try decaf

http://i.imgur.com/I3vFRaR.jpg

Sadly I've forgotten what was distinctive about this one but I believe it was the fact that it has condensed milk and was thus too sweet.

http://i.imgur.com/rI6Wo6X.jpg

This was less sweet and had a good amount of milk. Out of the limited selection I got through recently (short trip), this was the best.

I really love the aesthetics of the design of coffee cans there, no matter what they taste like.

http://imgur.com/lB3LJoB.jpg

YAMAZAKI CAFFE LATTE / MY RATING: ****

daily yamazaki has the most range from store to store--the one i used to work across from sold ben&jerry's and swisher sweets but the one at the bottom of my building despite being actually in the same building i'll usually walk over to any of the other convenience store chains nearby. run by an elderly couple that immediately come from behind the counter to guide the customer. i grabbed this terrible sandwich. white bread, salt, egg. a potato salad sandwich. ham and lettuce. they close on sundays. they close at 9 pm. a selection of mostly yamazaki-branded beverages. including this yamazaki caffe latte. pretty good, actually.

I wonder how these things compare to the milk based iced coffees that are ubiquitous in Oz. I imagine I could try at least Pokka from an azn supermarket.

you have a duty to the thread

That sandwich does indeed look horrible.

I kind of wonder about what health food lunch looks like in the big cities in Japan. What are the options? I imagine a yoshinoya, an issaken or izakaya, a convenience store.

Tully's Demitasse FTW - only one that doesn't make me gag

i dunno: 7-11 salad, teishoku fish + veg + soup japanese food or kitchen origin, and like actual cold pressed juice quinoa salad places?

http://i.imgur.com/3gd5tUq.jpg

GEORGIA AEROPRESS CAFE LATTE / MY RATING: ****

strong contender for best canned coffee.

Aero Presso! Would try
Also, nice shoes

thanks, bud. give er a try if u get the chance.

https://i.imgur.com/vquq4AV.jpg

that's printed on the can and not actually embossed, right? still looks pretty imposing

emPRIDE OF BOSSed.

otm

Nice

Would guzzle

I just had the coca cola coffee limited can the other day, ISO dylannn's review of it.

i haven't seen it in machines around here yet. i have never really enjoyed a coffee cola.

PRIDE OF BOSS just in case anyone is rushing out to pick it up is one of the worst canned coffees i've tasted.

damn i was about to get a PRIDE OF BOSS tattoo, thx for info

by "HY". Product of Korea. Drat!

this tastes remarkably similar to any other canned mocha option.
This is kind of my main takeaway from this thread. But I’ll always try a new one anyway

by "HY". Product of Korea. Drat!

dylannnnnnnnnn so gladddddd to see you back, sorry I missed the earlier posts. Your writing is so evocative using such small touches, I hope you use it elsewhere too.

thank you. i would never want anyone to read 95% of what i posted on this website (the first ilx posts to the peak are from when i was in my late teens to early twenties), but the compliments on writing are part of the reason i have the confidence to attempt to do it for a living. nowadays, i'm too cut off from popular culture to comment on anything. i still read daily, though.

would this thread be the place to review a BTS macadamia mocha latte?

I always get a BTS cold brew when I go to the Korean convinience store because I'm a fancy lad.

I missed the display entirely. My missus picked this up in a quick visit to a Korean supermarket in Toronto, while I was selecting the perfect box of mangoes and a pound of shitake mushrooms to make a risotto that would be sure to impress her parents. While the Asian grocery situation in Newfoundland is steadily improving (we're no longer tempted to stuff a suitcase with food while we're up here), visiting the Chinese and Korean grocery stores is always a highlight of these regular trips to the mainland.

So Daniel, is there "hot brew" alongside the "cold brew" at your shop? Do you pass them by because, like, what are you supposed to do, empty the plastic bottle into a saucepan for 10 minutes? Like why aren't i just making coffee at that point, right? No,no. I did the research, and Hot Brew is a drink best served cold. And, boy! Delicious. Sweet, milky, nutty, and a nice little pick-me-up. Almond along with macadamia, the stuck-on English ingredient list would confirm. I was impressed.

I never really bother with any can coffee. I would have the odd one from a vending machine when I lived in Japan, say, on my way to work and about to fall over from the previous evening's frivolities. All coffee was an emergency-only venture to me back then. And those Boss drinks were just sickly sweet. So I was extra impressed here.

Apparently the hot/cold thing is just referring to the brew process used. This is extra confusing because fancy bending machines will offer Boss et al in hot and cold options. But, on reflection, I suppose these were just the same drink with different temperature options presented to the discerning canned coffee connoisseur... is this right, Dylan? Or are there sometimes different formulations meant to be drunk hot?

In any case: 7.9. Shining through the city with a little nutted funk and soul.

https://i.imgur.com/z03Ppq5.png

cold brew i've only seen marketed chilled. there's no reason you can't drink it warm, so maybe it occasionally sneaks into the heated cabinet in convenience stores. i've never noticed. i think it might be down to the type of containers used, most heated vending machine product being small cans, and, in the heated cabinet, a potential problem with thin PET bottles for the cold brew. other than that, i've only seen a few coffees described on labeling as meant to be drunk chilled.

http://imgur.com/kVTkTfq.jpg

i was surprised to see it was not recorded here: there is a family mart-brand ready to drink butter coffee. it has butter from new zealand and mct oil. it was positioned as a weight loss supplement for women (a sharp gender divide in food and beverage marketing still holds here, where it would be unthinkable for a man to order the "lady's set" offered at most restaurants). marketing included a testimonial from a woman that lost five pounds on a butter coffee diet. in japan, there is not much interest in the kind of diet fads that sweep western popular media. it is still 1982 here—aerobics, high carb-low fat. this is a country with no tariffs on american corn. i admit that ucc might know something that i don't about dietary trends. they do promote this as a new product and as something that might help the sedentary with weight loss. it might be an attempt to replicate the success of the colas with dietary fiber. i wonder if it's cheaper currently to thicken a latte with palm oil than soybean oil. the mouthfeel seems nicer, anyways, although that might be down to some carrageenan magic. coffee flavor was good.

freakin me out with these soybean and palm oils, it's coffee dammit!

grease those pounds away, with butter!

The only canned coffee product I've ever found (in the states) that I really enjoy is the La Colombe draft latte. Even Stumptown and Blue Bottle's canned/cartoned offerings are pretty meh.

Sounds kind of like “bulletproof coffee” which has butter and other fats in it.

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/what-bulletproof-coffee

maybe these associations are inaccurate but in my mind bulletproof coffee is tied up with joe rogan, reddit masculinity, keto snacks advertised on comedy podcasts, so it was interesting to see it pitched as a drink for ladies looking to slim down: https://www.family.co.jp/campaign/spot/201712buttercoffee_english.html

http://imgur.com/P72R0HS.jpg

a cafe latte. no vegetable oil. thirty percent handpicked beans from carmo de minas. the source of the remaining seventy percent is not specified. if they don't come from somewhere else in brazil, then it must be vietnam. it's interesting to consider that nothing in this bottle was sourced in japan. the sugar is not produced in japan 国産 but listed as processed domestically 国内製造. did you know that japanese food self-sufficiency fell to 37% in 2020? the flavor is smooth.

The public demands “oil free” and laws are passed that require canned coffees to specify the percentage used

david lynch ads for coffee in a can, set in the world of twin peaks, only ever aired in japan. wild pic.twitter.com/4HHwvp6mHK

— ecto🦠drome (@ecto_fun) July 20, 2022

ha, I watched that with my daughters about 3 days ago. GEORGIA!

http://imgur.com/s6h8LKC.jpg

two nights ago, i wrote a lengthy examination of starbucks' first ready to drink canned offering in japan, then got self-conscious, trying to figure out why i had written eight hundred words jargony and insipid enough for a trade magazine. i thought about passing it off as a gag, undercutting it somehow, but i couldn't bring myself to do it. i shouldn't have deleted it. but my conclusion, anyways, was that it was head and shoulders above anything else on the market, precisely because the goal despite it being made in japan for the japanese market (the copy on the can assured me that i was holding nippon steel) was to have it taste like starbucks coffee instead of making an attempt at localizing to the japanese canned coffee average. well. this is interesting, looking at the bts coffee from hy. this also tastes like something different from the usual. maybe i'm losing my mind. the flavor profile—artificial vanilla so dominant, a toastier coffee note—does stand out, as well as, like the starbucks, a less syrupy texture. i might buy this again but the branding does put me off. i don't want to make a bold statement about my connection to korean pop music.

aw would've enjoyed that

yeah that HY i had was real good. I don't typically drink fancy Starbucks type stuff but it seemed on par with what I've tasted fresh from there.

seconded - always happy to read your writing Dyl

re Starbucks -- I have a similar aversion to the brand but the fact is that their coffee is pretty consistently great imho

knowing i can't delete it an hour later, i always overthink. that was not always the case. but i'll try my best.

the aversion was for bts branding. no feelings on starbucks.

i'm going to post an image here just to see what it looks like with a different size.

http://imgur.com/Gw59lMJ.jpg

Today I learned that Boss coffee is available in the US

https://www.amazon.com/BOSS-COFFEE-Suntory-Japanese-Original/dp/B07PMNB62N/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=YOPS77FL20L8&keywords=boa%2Bcoffee&qid=1659093467&sprefix=boss%2Bcoffee%2Caps%2C69&sr=8-1&th=1&psc=1

http://storage.googleapis.com/urbo11/urbo11/cofsaru.jpg

as a rule or this is what i have found to be true discount grocery stores have better sushi, since they usually maintain a fish section, by which i mean they bring in fish and cut it there, which is perhaps for labor savings or because they can't count as a larger national chain would on a distributor to provide cut and wrapped fish. this means that freshness is guaranteed if not the quality of the rice. down the street, the shitamachi staple supermarket patronized only by the elderly is on its way to putting out of commission a takeout chain sushi operation that opened up next door. the fish is better at the supermarket. given that they need to keep prices down, they also emphasize seasonal and sometimes quite peculiar fishes (they also sell shark and whale, i should note, although not to be consumed raw). now, the local branch of national chain maruetsu has to compete against the takeout shops and the discount supermarkets... they couldn't compete. that's clear. their fish was second-rate. their rice wasn't particularly good. their selection was limited. this seems to be why they have revamped their ready to eat sushi selections, which is presented under the uoetsu brand. i think the fish being sourced is probably the same, but its freshness and shelf appeal reflects a refinement of shipping and packing processes. perhaps suppliers have changed. variety is still limited. seasonality is limited. but it's better. i am still too loyal to the discount supermarket. this tray was not eaten by me. i will admit that. i drank the coffee posed on top.

Excellent reporting, always nice to hear from you d
Is there much talk of over fishing or seafood stock heading downhill?

no. i never hear anything about that. there is much excitement these days over sustainable development goals. but they are applied even to whaling. overfishing is not mentioned. i know other countries have labeling for sustainable fish or encourage long line whatever, but that simply doesn't exist here, as far as i've seen.

japan feeds itself on american meat and grain imports and unsustainable fisheries, sadly. rice is the only thing truly protected. it gets fed to pigs.

https://japantoday.com/category/features/kuchikomi/japan's-food-self-sufficiency-alarmingly-low-72-mil-could-go-hungry-magazine-says

even japanese beef and dairy cows are fed on imported hay (american, australian, chinese), a fact i found hard to believe when i first read it. it's not that they can't grow enough but that nobody will grow it and if they do they have nobody to cut it for them. that is a simplification but about the state of things. as the japanese diet over the long postwar years shifted to wheat, self-sufficiency has become harder to accomplish. this is the key to all geopolitical questions concerning japan, more than microchips or thinking themselves still honorary aryans or wanting to defend taiwanese democracy. they can say eff it (or get the permission of america) and buy gas from russia, as they just did, but they need american food imports.

but to return to fish, with that dire level of self-sufficiency, there's no way for anybody in charge to start pushing a line on not eating tuna. i'm sure most people compared to average american are eating somewhat sustainable fish too. little oily fish as a staple, top of the food chain as a luxury (or in your grocery store sushi as maguro).

but enjoy your unagi now because in a decade you will only be able to get an artificial version shipped out of a factory in tsukuba.

sup dyl.

Kindai University funds a few 本マグロ farms that have been harvesting off the coast of Wakayama for about 20 years. Most of it is for the domestic market but some of it goes overseas (weirdly, as Mediterranean farms in Croatia, Spain/Balaerica & Turkey are the biggest global producers).

hey steve shasta

i knew maguro could be farmed but i've never considered the extent of it. i should pay attention to the labels on the packs of maguro tataki next time.

https://i.imgur.com/qLRA3B8.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/kRbVlzf.jpg

Couple of new label designs