To be honest, I’m not even sure what I’m tasting with each sip of the latest fast-food seduction from Wendy’s. It’s billed as a Frosty Cream Cold Brew, a new caffeinated drink with a sweet, melodious name — and lots of expectations. But the dark-chocolate version tastes like horchata, prepared from a powdered mix, crossed with cold brew coffee, old cardboard, Cool Whip and enough sugar to keep a kindergarten class wired for the day.
Before you skip straight to the comments section to fire off your “East Coast snob” remarks, you should keep in mind that, when it comes to coffee, I’m a snob on every coast. Coffee is the one thing that brings out my Anton Ego: I’d rather skip it than drink an inferior version, especially in my older years when my caffeine intake is limited to one or two delirious cups a day, preferably in pour-over form.
The fact that I, through sheer association, lump the Frosty Cream Cold Brew into the same category as “coffee” probably bans me for life from the Ancient Order of Air Pinkie Pour-over Dorks. I mean, I know some folks in the industry who consider preparations like the Frosty Cream Cold Brew more akin to dessert than coffee. They’re not wrong.
For those keeping track of Wendy’s fumbling efforts to compete in the fast-food breakfast market — it’s apparently the chain’s fourth or fifth attempt — its latest coffee confection replaces the Frosty-ccino. I never thought I’d say these words, but I feel for the Frosty. One of the first items introduced in 1969 at the inaugural Wendy’s in Columbus, Ohio, the Frosty deserves to kick back and chill in its golden years, content with the knowledge that it was (and is) a fast-food original: not quite ice cream, not quite a milkshake, but always delicious.
But, no, the brain trust behind Wendy’s continues to add more tasks to the Frosty’s to-do list. Such as: making it serve as the conduit through which the chain sells cold-brew coffee at approximately 6,000 locations across the United States. The Frosty-ccino debuted in 2020 as part of Wendy’s latest attempt to break the breakfast code. Unlike a Starbucks Frappuccino, which relies on a custom-powdered roast that dissolves in cold water, the Frosty-ccino was prepared with cold-brew coffee. Its ingredient list, in fact, was not significantly different from the Frosty Cream Cold Brew’s. So what separates the two?
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John Li, the global vice president of culinary innovation for Wendy’s, provided an answer via an emailed statement. “Wendy’s noticed that customers wanted more of that coffee flavor, so with the new Frosty Cream Cold Brew we flipped the build,” Li wrote. “Instead of leading with ice, we are focused on the ratio of flavors first. This begins with adding the preferred syrup (vanilla, chocolate, caramel), followed by Wendy’s signature Frosty Cream, real cold brew and ice. It’s a better balance of flavors overall.”
As Li notes, the Frosty Cream Cold Brew (starting at $1.99 for a small cup) can be customized with your choice of sweetener: You can add pumps of dark chocolate, French vanilla or caramel Monin syrups. I’ve ordered the dark chocolate and French vanilla preparations, and I can say this without reservation: Neither has anything to do with coffee. Then again, the Frappuccino was, for all intents and purposes, a surrender in the first place, an admission that if baristas couldn’t hook you with the bitter, aromatic compounds of coffee, they’d get you with sugar and cream instead.
Wendy’s reduces the bitter load even further by relying on cold brew. Unlike iced coffee, in which hot pour-over coffee trickles straight into a cup with ice, cold brew relies on coarsely ground beans that are steeped in cold or room-temperature water over many hours. A spokeswoman for Wendy’s told me the chain uses a blend of Sumatran beans, which are steeped for 12 hours in cold water.
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The method makes for a mellow cup, all but eliminating acid and bitterness, which perhaps is not that difficult with Sumatran beans, which are known for low acidity due to their processing. It’s a smart move on Wendy’s part, blending the Frosty’s cream base with a cold brew designed to emphasize the sweetness of coffee.
But as James Hoffmann notes in “How to Make the Best Coffee at Home,” the long steeping process “gives the brewing liquid plenty of time to interact with the oxygen in the environment, which gives a lot of cold-brewed coffee an oxidized taste that many people find deeply unpleasant.” To my palate, oxidized coffee translates into wet cardboard, one of the most undesirable qualities in a cup.
Without examining Wendy’s cold-brew process firsthand, it’s impossible to say where the flavor goes off the rails. It could be because of oxidation during the long steep. It could be because the beans are defective or not fresh in the first place.
Regardless, when I tried Wendy’s cold brew on its own, over a cup of ice, I couldn’t help but notice those Sumatran beans trying hard to express themselves. I could detect their fruitiness and sweetness, but they were muted. You could say they were buried — under layers of wet cardboard.
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