In 2023, you have a lot of options for drive-thru coffee spots, from Starbucks to Dunkin’ to Coffee Bean, to Dutch Bros. And while we’re of the mind that the best coffee is going to come from a small local coffee shop that is willing to get nerdy about both its beans and brewing process, it’s hard to beat the price and convenience of the big chains. Among these behemoths, nobody is faster or cheaper than McDonald’s. There is a whole crowd of people who ride hard for McDonald’s McCafe line of coffee drinks and the brand is always looking for ways to expand that menu — which brings us to the Chicago chain’s latest newest product, the new Cold Brew and Marbled Cold Brew coffee.
Available for a limited time at just 600 company-owned and franchise restaurants in Southern California, the Cold Brew and Marbled Cold Brew join a menu that includes roast coffee, hot chocolate, hot tea, and flavored iced coffee drinks like caramel, hazelnut, and French vanilla. Since cold drinks are by far the most popular coffee chain menu options, a successful cold brew would push McDonald’s even more into direct competition with places like Starbucks (which has a jaw-dropping 23 different iced coffee drinks, we ranked ’em all) and Dunkin,’ two brands that are arguably the kings of fast food cold brew.
So how do these McD’s entries stack up? We found out by tracking down the new drinks and tasting them. I have intimate knowledge of both Starbucks and Dunkin’s iced coffee menus, so I’ll be comparing the new McDonald’s drinks to their proper counterparts on the ‘Bucks and DD menus. Let’s sip!
McDonald’s Cold Brew and Marbled Cold Brew Coffee
Dane Rivera
Price: $3.19/$3.59
Tasting Notes:
Decent cold brew can land anywhere between being supremely mellow, fruity, a bit chocolatey, nutty, and full of roasted character. It’s much sweeter than typical brewed coffee and way less bitter, this sounds great but can sometimes come across as tasting sour to some people. Unfortunately, McDonald’s Cold Brew has none of these qualities. The plain black cold brew is mellow to the point of almost tasting watery. It has no bitter bite to it, which is nice, but at times made me feel like I wasn’t really drinking coffee.
I’m getting hints of roasted coffee notes, but I’m really straining to taste them, the mouthfeel is soft but nothing jumps out on my palate as particularly enjoyable.
Dane Rivera
Luckily, the Marbled Cold Brew comes across a lot better. Now, granted, it’s pumped full of some sort of sweet creamy vanilla-esque syrup with ribbons of even more cream to give it its marbled color (which is only really present before you mix the drink together), but the soft and mellow flavor keeps this drinking sweet leaning but without the bitter aftertaste that overstays its welcome found in McDonald’s typical iced coffee. Because of that, I think this is a much better experience than what the iced coffee offers, it focuses on sweetness and keeps things mellow and dialed in on the creamy notes.
How Does It Compare to Starbucks?
Dane Rivera
Starbucks has a few drinks that compare, let’s first talk about the Cold Brew and Nitro Cold Brew. Starbucks’ Cold Brew is awful, it’s bitter, sour, and highly acidic. I don’t like it, and I think McDonald’s weak-tasting Cold Brew is much better. Starbucks’ Nitro cold brew on the other hand, has McDonald’s beat. The Nitro Cold Brew is smooth and has a bitter character similar to good dark chocolate with a hint of dark cherry fruitiness. It’s so much more complex than McDonald’s Cold Brew.
When it comes to the Marbled Cold Brew and Starbucks’ equivalent drinks, it’s not even close. At Starbucks, you can get Salted Caramel Cream Cold Brew and Vanilla Sweet Cream, both of which are way more complex than McDonald’s Marbled Cold Brew and offer flavors that take your tastebuds on a journey. Comparing them feels cruel, but if you want that added complexity you’ll have to pay nearly double the price of what McDonald’s is selling, and the McDonald’s drive-thru moves much faster than Starbucks — so its a bit of a time differential as well.
How Does It Compare To Dunkin’?
Dunkin
Dunkin’ secretly has some of the best cold brew coffee in the fast food coffee universe. It’s nutty, with notes of dark chocolate, a smooth character, and a slightly sweet aftertaste. I think it’s vastly superior to both McDonald’s and Dunkin’. Dunkin’, unfortunately, doesn’t have a sweetened variety (on the permanent menu at least) that directly competes with what McDonald’s or Starbucks offers.
You can sweeten your Cold Brew with cream and sugar, which will get you in the ballpark of McDonald’s Marbled Cold Brew, but the Marbled does sweetness better, Dunkin’s falls flat and ends up muddying a great product.
The Bottom Line:
If sweet cold brew coffee is your thing, McDonald’s Marbled Cold Brew is definitely worth the pickup and puts up a good fight against both Starbucks and Dunkin’. Starbucks wins on complexity, but McDonald’s gets points for price and convenience.
Rootin’ tootin’ Lauren Boebert has been raging for weeks on subjects related to the debt ceiling, and she’s been ranting for days about the deal waged by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Biden. Granted, she’s also been preoccupied lately with the “unbecoming” congressional hoodie of John Fetterman and taking continued swipes at Bud Light, but one would imagine that showing up for the House vote on the debt ceiling deal, known as the Fiscal Reponsibility Act of 2023 or H.R. 3746, would be a top priority.
Not so much, apparently. Boebert has been mightily tweeting against the deal and vowing, “You can count me as a NO on this deal.”
Our base didn’t volunteer, door knock and fight so hard to get us the majority for this kind of compromise deal with Joe Biden.
Our voters deserve better than this. We work for them.
You can count me as a NO on this deal. We can do better.
And yet, she didn’t make it on time for the Wednesday evening vote, during which the House passed the bill (which awaits further action by the Senate). As noted by Axios Capitol Hill reporter Juliegrace Brufke, “Rep. Lauren Boebert narrowly missed the vote, running up the steps right as they gaveled.”
Rep. Lauren Boebert narrowly missed the vote, running up the steps right as they gaveled.
What happened? Boebert hasn’t delivered a formal statement on her tardiness, nor has she tweeted about the subject. Actually, she hasn’t tweeted at all since this happened. (This must have taken the root out of her toot.) However, in an array of tweets this week, Boebert urged her fellow Republicans to vote against the bill, calling it “classic Washington DC swamp garbage” while adding, “No sensible conservative can vote for this.”
To be fair on that second quote up there, sure, Boebert kept her word on not voting for the bill. Yet she didn’t vote against it either, which is super awkward. So with that said, Twitter user Damon Mast presented, “A play in three (short) acts starring Lauren Boebert.”
Spending money on good Scotch whisky isn’t that hard. There’s more than enough of it on the shelf. Still, when spending big money on any whiskey, you kind of want to know what you’re spending all that hard-earned cash on. Sometimes just seeing “cask strength” or “20 Years Old” on a label isn’t enough information. Plus, you don’t want to bring home a bottle that you don’t love. Otherwise, you could be spending all that cash on something that’s just going to collect dust on a shelf.
To help you avoid that, I’m going to blindly taste eight big-time top-shelf Scotch whiskies that cost a pretty penny. I raided my liquor shelves and ended up with eight killer bottles of Scotch whisky that all hit high marks (awards, critical darlings, big sellers, etc.) and also cost a mint — hell, some of these cost a small fortune.
That makes our lineup today the following top-shelf Scotch whiskies:
Bowmore Masters’ Selection Aston Martin Aged 22 Years Islay Single Malt Scotch Whisky
The GlenDronach Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky Cask Strength Batch no. 12
Linkwood Single Malt Scotch Whisky 31-Year-Old Lady Macduff Thanes Series Macbeth Act One
Glenfiddich Grand Yozakura Aged 29 Years Single Malt Scotch Whisky
Glenglassaugh Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky 46 Years Old
The Dalmore Cigar Malt Reserve Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky
Mortlach Single Malt Scotch Whisky Aged for 20 Years
The Glenlivet 21 Years of Age Single Malt Scotch Whisky The Sample Room Collection
After I taste-tested these whiskies blindly, I ranked them according to their taste. And, ho boy, was that a difficult task. All of these whiskies were f*cking fantastic. Two pours did stand out, but the other six were all basically equals that I had to go back over two or three times and split some serious hairs to actually rank. Who knew super expensive Scotch whisky was so damn good? Right?!?!
I kid, I kid. Still, read through those tasting notes and find one that speaks to you. Then hit that price link to see if you can find a bottle in your neck of the woods. Let’s dive in!
Also Read: The Top 5 UPROXX Scotch Whisky Posts of The Last Six Months
Nose: Gently smoked cherries and smoked orange come through on the nose with a mild sense of smudging sage ash next to bourbon vanilla and apple fritters with a soft powdered sugar glaze.
Palate: That sweetness presents on the palate with a smoke chocolate powder vibe next to spiced malts, singed vanilla husks, and more of those smoked cherries but this time they have a twinge of tartness with a pinch of salt.
Finish: The finish combines the tart yet salty smoked cherries with the dark chocolate next to a deep sense of oak and spicy malts.
Initial Thoughts:
This is a nice peaty with a subtle Islay edge. The smokiness is more earthy and plays second fiddle to the boldly spiced malts, dark fruits, and caramelized sweetness. It’s a great balance of flavor notes is what I’m getting at.
Taste 2
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
Nose: Scoops of decadent dark chocolate powder draw you in with a hint of espresso cream, burnt orange, and marzipan with a moist sticky toffee pudding vibe next to a faint whisper of dried rose.
Palate: The palate is lush with a roasted and rich espresso bean vibe with salted dark chocolate, chinotto orange, and more rich and moist marzipan with a dash of ginger candy dipped in clove and allspice tea.
Finish: There’s a rich vanilla underbelly that smooths everything out on the end with a sense of rum raisin and faint bourbon cherry tobacco layered with soft cedar and mocha lattes.
Initial Thoughts:
This is pretty damn good whisky. The choco-coffee bitterness does peak pretty high by the mid-palate, taking away from the creaminess of the mouthfeel a bit. But that’s just the high ABVs poking you in the ribs. This feels like it’d turn into rich chocolate malted pudding cream at Christmas dinner with a little water or ice.
Taste 3
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
Nose: The nose opens with a beautiful sense of ripe apricot (fresh from vine clarity) with creamy lemon curd, fresh spearmint, lavender lemonade, soft saddle soap, buttery brioche, and … I swear … freshly washed sheets hanging out on a line on a sunny day.
Palate: Fresh pears and sweet apples counter the apricot on the palate as buttery scones just touched with rose water smeared with vanilla brandy butter with a light toward of floral honey and very dry champagne.
Finish: The pear layers into the champagne while the floral honey creates a luxurious mouthfeel next to soft moments of winter spice barks, marmalade, apricot leather, and creamy salted buttercream just kissed with vanilla and summer flowers.
Initial Thoughts:
This is a delicious whisky with an amazing mouthfeel. It’s like this creamy, silky, succulent pour that just keeps getting softer and softer with insanely deep flavor notes. So good.
Taste 4
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
Nose: The nose is immediately amazing with deep notes of caramelized orange and grapefruit peels rolled in roasted almonds, allspice, and salt with a hint of confectioner’s sugar leading to this toffee maltiness and dark leathery fruitiness just kissed with creamy vanilla/chocolate before a hint of dried savory herbs sneaks in with a touch of old oak.
Palate: That ultra creamy vanilla and toffee lean into that soft oakiness and caramelized maltiness with a hint of green apple tartness and old wicker baskets full of tree barks next to date tobacco and salted caramel chocolate ganache.
Finish: That tobacco takes on a sticky toffee pudding and mincemeat pie vibe as the creaminess just keeps getting creamier on the long spice malt finish.
Initial Thoughts:
This is next level on all counts. It’s wildly delicious.
Taste 5
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
Nose: This is almost … fresh on the nose with a sense of tart and woody black currants, fresh plum, mango juice, and red grapes that then veers into the abyss with a sense of old boot leather, maple wood dipped in varnish, and waxy sense of ambergris (I swear) — think boot cream, fresh tobacco, and sandalwood with a hint of salt.
Palate: The taste takes the fruit and tosses it into a fruit salad that’s cut with seawater and nori that’s then countered by menthol tobacco and sharp citrus oils with a whisper of cherry-flavored cream soda.
Finish: A twinge of grapefruit oil drives the finish toward this fleeting sense of cellar dirt, more ambergris, and mint chocolate chip ice cream that’s laced with pipe tobacco and black currants.
Initial Thoughts:
Again, this is amazingly delicious. I just shook my head when I smelled and sipped this one. It’s so … everything you want it to be. You truly felt the … I want to say … wealth while drinking it. I guess true “richness” maybe? I don’t know how else to explain it.
Taste 6
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
Nose: The nose is openly complex from the first inhalation with a matrix of sticky toffee pudding spices — cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg — next to dried red berries with a slight earthiness, a touch of salted toffee candies, and a whisper of vanilla wafers.
Palate: The palate opens with a chocolate maltiness next to a bowl of fresh and tropical fruits — pineapple, tart apples, sweet pears, plums, bruised bananas — with a mild nuttiness, sharp orange zest, and subtle winter spices.
Finish: There’s a light mustiness on the back end that leads to soft and moist pipe tobacco with a thin layer of orchard fruits and stewed figs.
Initial Thoughts:
This is right up there with the last two pours. It’s so delicate yet runs powerfully deep. It’s a tad less rich than the last two, but that’s me splitting some microscopic hairs.
Taste 7
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
Nose: Freshly baked apple pie with cinnamon bark and nutmeg lead to black raisins, fatty walnuts, grilled pineapple, and sea-salt-infused dark cacao sauce with a hint of vanilla and pear on the nose.
Palate: The palate leans into the lard pie crust under that apple pie with a hint of powdered sugar icing next to mint chocolate chip, old vanilla pods, and banana’s foster with a smidge of clove and allspice thrown in.
Finish: There’s a light sense of caramel malts on the end that leads to a walnut cake full of raisins and cinnamon with a buttery vibe next to a savory note that’s part green herbs and part extra virgin olive oil.
Initial Thoughts:
This is delicious but didn’t hit as hard as the last three pours. It’s still damn near perfect though. Oh, and it’s delicious.
Taste 8
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
Nose: Leather and winter spices lead the way on the nose with a hint of saffron-stewed pears, ripe peaches, and lush eggnog next to boiled beans with a bay leaf.
Palate: The palate leans into the peaches and pears but puts them in a pie with plenty of cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg next to apricot jam and rum-raisin.
Finish: The mid-palate hits a pine resin note before descending toward brandied cherries and dark chocolate with fresh ginger sharpens and a dash of cinnamon candy.
Initial Thoughts:
It’s great. I’m not sure what else I can say. Okay, maybe it was a little on the thin side thanks to some low ABVs, but it was still really tasty. So who cares what the ABVs are?
Part 2 — The Top Shelf Scotch Whisky Ranking
Zach Johnston
8. Bowmore Masters’ Selection Aston Martin Aged 22 Years Islay Single Malt Scotch Whisky — Taste 1
This is the next step in the much-lauded high-end Aston Martin series from Bowmore. The whisky is batched from special barrels of Bowmore’s famed barely-peated whisky into a final product that’s refined and just kissed with that iconic Islay spring water.
Bottom Line:
This being 8th was almost me throwing a dart at a name to place here. This is really good whisky. The only reason I could justify it being here is that the peatiness kind of distracted from the overall profile beneath. Though as I write it, even that’s a stretch.
My dramatics aside, this is a wonderfully tasty whisky with beautifully subtle peat that marries to the soft malts damn near perfectly. And hey, if you’re into cool classic cars, this is a must-have. So there’s that.
7. The GlenDronach Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky Cask Strength Batch no. 12 — Taste 2
This brand-new batch from Dr. Rachel Barrie at The GlenDronach is all about long aging. The whisky is left to mellow in Pedro Ximénez and Oloroso sherry casks from Andalucía, Spain. The age statement is on the bottle, but the blends tend to lean over a decade. The final mix is then bottled at cask strength to really highlight that Spanish oak.
Bottom Line:
The only reason this is this low is that it was a little sharp/bitter/warm on the palate. I could have used a single cube of ice or a drop or two of water. After that, it probably would have skyrocketed to the top of the list. But alas, I was tasting this neat without any of that so here we are.
6. The Glenlivet 21 Years of Age Single Malt Scotch Whisky The Sample Room Collection — Taste 8
This redesigned The Glenlivet is still a classic whisky. The hot juice is aged in a triple combination of first-fill Oloroso sherry, Troncais oak Cognac casks, and vintage Colheita Port casks. After 21 long years (at least), the barrels are vatted and proofed down before bottling.
Bottom Line:
The hair I split on this one was the low ABV. That made this less powerful a sip but it was still 100% a satisfying one. It didn’t need a rock or water. It was a very well-rounded sip. And look, most times you don’t want that big ABV punch. So this is going to satisfy a lot of easy-going whisky drinkers out there.
5. Mortlach Single Malt Scotch Whisky Aged for 20 Years — Taste 7
Dufftown’s Mortlach is one of those distilleries that may just make you fall in love with scotch. The mash is distilled 2.81 times, according to Mortlach’s unique distilling methods. That juice is then loaded in sherry casks and left to do its thing for 20 long years. The results are vatted, brought down to proof with that soft Speyside water, and bottled.
Bottom Line:
Inside the vacuum of my home, this is a perfect whisky. I still believe that. Today, it didn’t pop quite as much as other pours on this panel. That hasn’t changed my mind at all. This is a perfect Dufftown malt.
4. Linkwood Single Malt Scotch Whisky 31-Year-Old Lady Macduff Thanes Series Macbeth Act One — Taste 3
This whisky is from a super whisky nerd distillery, Linkwood. If you know, you know. The whisky in the bottle was chosen by Elixir for its Macbeth lineup this year. The whisky is hewn from four ex-bourbon barrels that held the malt for at least 31 years (it’s a small miracle that any survived). Those barrels were vatted and bottled as-is.
Bottom Line:
This was kind of crazy. It is an amazing pour of whisky. It also kind of came out of nowhere. I had no idea what it was but I wanted more immediately. But since my palate is quite attuned to it yet, I feel like I missed some deeper components that I need to revisit down the road.
Basically, I’m saying that this is the sort of whisky you need to spend a few sessions with to fully get into. So it’s a little lower ranked on this panel.
3. The Dalmore Cigar Malt Reserve Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky — Taste 6
This Highland whisky is a no-age-statement version of The Dalmore. The whisky is made from Golden barley that grows on the island in rich and very coastal soils. The ground malted barley is mixed with pure water from the Cromarty Firth nearby during the mashing process. After a couple of times through pot stills, the hot whisky is loaded into ex-bourbon casks, 30-year-old Matusalem Oloroso Sherry butts, and former Cabernet Sauvignon from the Saint-Estèphe appellation of Bordeaux. After 10 to 15 years, those barrels are vatted, the whiskey is proofed, and it’s bottled.
Bottom Line:
Delicious. Buy a case.
2. Glenglassaugh Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky 46 Years Old — Taste 5
Glenglassaugh is a reborn distillery in Scotland — having operated from the 1800s to the 1980s before getting mothballed for over two decades before its resurgence in 2008. This is important to know that the whiskey in this bottle was made in 1975 during the last years of the distillery’s 20th-century heyday. Living legend Master Blender Dr. Rachel Barrie found this barrel (a bourbon cask) in the stocks, and by some sort of whisky miracle, there was juice in the barrel. That whisky was bottled as-is at barrel strength and sent exclusively to the U.S.
Bottom Line:
This was almost laughably great. Like, how dare they make a whisky this good? It is one of the best examples of unpeated depth and perfection I think I’ve ever encountered. But it did stay in the “classic” lane, which endears me to it all the more thinking back now.
1. Glenfiddich Grand Yozakura Aged 29 Years Single Malt Scotch Whisky — Taste 4
This brand-new limited edition from Glenfiddich is their first foray into Japanese barrel finishing. After 29 years (!) in American oak and re-fill oak, the whisky is vatted and refilled into an ex-Awamori cask — which is an Okinawan rice spirit of sorts — for another nine months of mellowing. Those barrels were then batched and bottled with a hint of proofing water.
Bottom Line:
This was otherworldly good. It was classic at first then veered off into new territory while still feeling comforting and nostalgic. It’s just an amazing pour of whisky.
Part 3 — Final Thoughts on the Top Shelf Scotch Whisky
Zach Johnston
So, the top five are the core bangers of this panel. I’d argue that you can get any of them and you’ll be in for an amazing treat.
And look, I get it. Of the top three, two of the bottles are amazingly rare and amazingly expensive. So I’d say, grab The Dalmore Cigar Malt Reserve. It’s a phenomenal pour of whisky and you should be able to actually find it pretty easily. The same goes for the Mortlach 20. You will not be disappointed for a single moment with either of those whiskies even though they weren’t ranked “first” on this list.
In 2023, you have a lot of options for drive-thru coffee spots, from Starbucks to Dunkin’ to Coffee Bean, to Dutch Bros. And while we’re of the mind that the best coffee is going to come from a small local coffee shop that is willing to get nerdy about both its beans and brewing process, it’s hard to beat the price and convenience of the big chains. Among these behemoths, nobody is faster or cheaper than McDonald’s. There is a whole crowd of people who ride hard for McDonald’s McCafe line of coffee drinks and the brand is always looking for ways to expand that menu — which brings us to the Chicago chain’s latest newest product, the new Cold Brew and Marbled Cold Brew coffee.
Available for a limited time at just 600 company-owned and franchise restaurants in Southern California, the Cold Brew and Marbled Cold Brew join a menu that includes roast coffee, hot chocolate, hot tea, and flavored iced coffee drinks like caramel, hazelnut, and French vanilla. Since cold drinks are by far the most popular coffee chain menu options, a successful cold brew would push McDonald’s even more into direct competition with places like Starbucks (which has a jaw-dropping 23 different iced coffee drinks, we ranked ’em all) and Dunkin,’ two brands that are arguably the kings of fast food cold brew.
So how do these McD’s entries stack up? We found out by tracking down the new drinks and tasting them. I have intimate knowledge of both Starbucks and Dunkin’s iced coffee menus, so I’ll be comparing the new McDonald’s drinks to their proper counterparts on the ‘Bucks and DD menus. Let’s sip!
McDonald’s Cold Brew and Marbled Cold Brew Coffee
Dane Rivera
Price: $3.19/$3.59
Tasting Notes:
Decent cold brew can land anywhere between being supremely mellow, fruity, a bit chocolatey, nutty, and full of roasted character. It’s much sweeter than typical brewed coffee and way less bitter, this sounds great but can sometimes come across as tasting sour to some people. Unfortunately, McDonald’s Cold Brew has none of these qualities. The plain black cold brew is mellow to the point of almost tasting watery. It has no bitter bite to it, which is nice, but at times made me feel like I wasn’t really drinking coffee.
I’m getting hints of roasted coffee notes, but I’m really straining to taste them, the mouthfeel is soft but nothing jumps out on my palate as particularly enjoyable.
Dane Rivera
Luckily, the Marbled Cold Brew comes across a lot better. Now, granted, it’s pumped full of some sort of sweet creamy vanilla-esque syrup with ribbons of even more cream to give it its marbled color (which is only really present before you mix the drink together), but the soft and mellow flavor keeps this drinking sweet leaning but without the bitter aftertaste that overstays its welcome found in McDonald’s typical iced coffee. Because of that, I think this is a much better experience than what the iced coffee offers, it focuses on sweetness and keeps things mellow and dialed in on the creamy notes.
How Does It Compare to Starbucks?
Dane Rivera
Starbucks has a few drinks that compare, let’s first talk about the Cold Brew and Nitro Cold Brew. Starbucks’ Cold Brew is awful, it’s bitter, sour, and highly acidic. I don’t like it, and I think McDonald’s weak-tasting Cold Brew is much better. Starbucks’ Nitro cold brew on the other hand, has McDonald’s beat. The Nitro Cold Brew is smooth and has a bitter character similar to good dark chocolate with a hint of dark cherry fruitiness. It’s so much more complex than McDonald’s Cold Brew.
When it comes to the Marbled Cold Brew and Starbucks’ equivalent drinks, it’s not even close. At Starbucks, you can get Salted Caramel Cream Cold Brew and Vanilla Sweet Cream, both of which are way more complex than McDonald’s Marbled Cold Brew and offer flavors that take your tastebuds on a journey. Comparing them feels cruel, but if you want that added complexity you’ll have to pay nearly double the price of what McDonald’s is selling, and the McDonald’s drive-thru moves much faster than Starbucks — so its a bit of a time differential as well.
How Does It Compare To Dunkin’?
Dunkin
Dunkin’ secretly has some of the best cold brew coffee in the fast food coffee universe. It’s nutty, with notes of dark chocolate, a smooth character, and a slightly sweet aftertaste. I think it’s vastly superior to both McDonald’s and Dunkin’. Dunkin’, unfortunately, doesn’t have a sweetened variety (on the permanent menu at least) that directly competes with what McDonald’s or Starbucks offers.
You can sweeten your Cold Brew with cream and sugar, which will get you in the ballpark of McDonald’s Marbled Cold Brew, but the Marbled does sweetness better, Dunkin’s falls flat and ends up muddying a great product.
The Bottom Line:
If sweet cold brew coffee is your thing, McDonald’s Marbled Cold Brew is definitely worth the pickup and puts up a good fight against both Starbucks and Dunkin’. Starbucks wins on complexity, but McDonald’s gets points for price and convenience.
Botany Bay/El Dorado/The Real McCoy/Don Q/istock/Uproxx
If you’re a whiskey drinker and you don’t also enjoy a glass of long-aged, nuanced rum every now and then (and vice versa), what are you waiting for? Obviously, the two spirits are quite different. Whiskey is made by mashing, fermenting, distilling, and aging (unless you’re making moonshine) a grain like corn (for bourbon) or barley (for single malt Scotch whisky). Rum is made from sugarcane juice or molasses that is fermented, distilled, and then aged (if you’re making dark rum).
While their overall flavors are different because of the main ingredients, the maturation process imparts some of the same notes. We’re talking about vanilla, caramel, dried fruits, oak, and other “dark liquor” profiles. It only makes sense that if you like to sit back and enjoy a nice glass of bourbon, rye, Canadian whisky, or single malt Scotch you’d at least be open to trying an aged dark rum.
The key is finding the rum that bridges the gap best between the two spirits. To find them, we went to the folks who bide their time behind the bar for help. We asked a handful of well-known bartenders to tell us the best rums for whiskey drinkers — keep scrolling to see what they had to say.
My favorite rum made for the whiskey drinker’s palate would have to be some of the Hamilton Rum selections made by legendary rum master, Ed Hamilton, of the Demerara Distillery in Guyana. Hamilton 86 is a great start. The additive-free, unfiltered, pot-stilled rums are extremely well-balanced. There’s no punch in the face with sugar or synthetic spices.
Tasting Notes:
Aged and blended in American Oak, you’ll find many of whiskey’s beloved flavors. There are hints of vanilla, caramel, coffee, and some fruit notes. Available at reasonable prices, these are not to be missed rums. Some of Hamilton Rum’s high-proof versions are a particularly great substitute for whiskey in an old fashioned.
Don Q Gran Reserva Añejo XO
Don Q
Max Messier, award-winning bartender and founder of Cocktail & Sons in New Orleans
Don Q Gran Reserva Añejo XO is a masterpiece of aged rums that are blended in the solera method, similar to new American whiskey blends and cask finishes. Highly recommended in an old fashioned or negroni variations.
Tasting Notes:
The sweet stone fruit on the mid-palate is complimented by a dry finish coupled with baking spices and a supple kiss similar to rich hot honey.
Don Pancho 18
Don Pancho
Tom Muscolino, director of beverage innovation at Landmark Hospitality in Plainfield, New Jersey
Don Pancho 18 Year Panamanian Rum. Made by the former master distiller of Havana Club, it is incredibly smooth and complex, with just a touch of sweetness.
Tasting Notes:
Notes of dried fruit, allspice, vanilla, charred oak, cinnamon, and a touch of leather. All appeal to whiskey fans.
The Real McCoy 12 Year
The Real McCoy
Alex Barbatsis, head bartender at The Whistler in Chicago
I have a tough time swapping out one spirit for the other as I use them in completely different ways in various cocktails. That being said, the Real McCoy Real McCoy 12 Year Aged is one rum that I’ve used in a variety of traditionally stirred whiskey-based cocktails.
Tasting Notes:
Its earthiness, sweetness, and oak lend itself well to a delicious Manhattan. It’s also great neat or on the rocks.
Rhum JM VO is a rhum agricole from Martinique that uses fresh pressed sugar cane juice in a copper pot still to make for a bright, round, and grassy flavor profile. Try it in your next old fashioned for a toe dip into the tropics.
Tasting Notes:
The VO is aged for three years in New American Oak, so you get a lot of caramel char notes when sipping.
Real McCoy Single Blended 5 Year is a great rum for whiskey drinkers. Especially bourbon fans. It is a blend of column and pot still rum aged for five years in oak ex-bourbon barrels.
Tasting Notes:
It presents with notes of oak, caramel, vanilla, and warm spices. Is reminiscent of American whiskey, bourbon specifically.
Bambu XO Rum. This complex, flavorful rum is great for whiskey drinkers. It’s matured in ex-bourbon barrels and finished in oak sherry casks. This sipping rum is a great change up from your usual bourbon or single malt whisky.
Tasting Notes:
The rum has an aged spice note that works well neat. There’s a ton of toffee, vanilla, toasted vanilla beans, orange peels, and oaky wood.
El Dorado 15 Year
El Dorado
Bijan Ghiai, beverage manager at Urban Hill in Salt Lake City Utah
El Dorado 15-year Rum. I think around the price point of $50-60, it is a good entry point to Rum. Especially for whiskey drinkers. The long maturation adds a ton of flavors whiskey drinkers enjoy.
Tasting Notes:
It has vanilla and baking spices characteristics to it. Rum can have a lot of similarities to whiskey with its long drawn-out finish, a punch of up-front flavor, with a wonderful complex background.
Botany Bay Rum
Botany Bay
Joseph DeBlasio, senior food and beverage operations manager at The Ritz-Carlton in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands
Because Botany Bay Rum has a long Caribbean history and is a combination of old French and English flavor styles that pair well in traditional Caribbean beverages. It’s also a great choice for whiskey drinkers looking for a change of pace.
Tasting Notes:
Since it’s distilled from fresh sugar cane juice as opposed to molasses, it creates a smoky flavor that attracts whiskey drinkers.
Ron Zacapa 23
Ron Zacapa
Jessie Dolores, manager of coffee and cocktails at Gansevoort Meatpacking in New York City
Ron Zacapa 23 is my favorite aged rum that has a whiskey-like flavor. Aged in American oak, it’s easy to combine Peychaud, orange, and Angostura bitters and it makes a delicious rum old fashioned.
Tasting Notes:
The vanilla aftertaste goes well with the brown sugar simple syrup that we make in-house and the dark flavors add a nice complexity for a Hemingway daiquiri. It’s also great sipped neat or on the rocks.
Even Pascal’s The Last of Us co-star Bella Ramsey thinks so.
“I very much played into it at the beginning, but now I’m worried it’s gone too far,” she told Vanity Fair. “I don’t know whether he’s still loving it; I need to ask him. He’s a global phenomenon as he should be, because he’s pretty spectacular.” To paraphrase Homer Simpson, the word “daddy” has been said so much, it’s lost all meaning.
Ramsey also teased what to expect from The Last of Us season two, which will cover the second game (as will season three). “It’s darker. It’s really a story about revenge, and a continuation from the first season about the dangers of unconditional love,” she said. The Last of Us season two was originally expected to premiere in 2025, but it might be pushed back to 2026 due to studio executives not paying writers what they deserve.
When Rihanna posts photos of herself, people pay attention. Her recently shared topless maternity photoshoot, for instance, certainly turned heads. Now, she’s back with more pics, and this time, she’s dispensing sex advice.
In the newly shared photos, Rihanna strikes various poses, including some that emphasize her pregnant belly, all while wearing an oversized T-shirt that reads in large, all-caps letters, “USE A CONDOM.” Rihanna also came through with a funny crack in the post’s caption, writing, “this shirt is old…”
The shirt is actually part of Rihanna’s new Savage X Fenty Xssential Lounge collection. Although Rihanna doesn’t model it herself, the collection features a similar T-shirt that reads, “I’m a virgin,” followed by, “This is a very old T-shirt.” Both shirts go for $44 a piece.
Elsewhere in the collection are casual, comfortable items like sweatpants, sweatshorts, bike shorts, brelettes, tank tops, robes, hoodies, socks, oversized pants, leggings, jumpsuits, and so on.
Meanwhile, it was recently revealed that Rihanna will star in, as well as produce and make new music for, an upcoming Smurfs movie. She said at the time, “Getting to do animation is a fun journey for me. I’m usually front and center with everything with my likeness […] but this was fun. I got to imagine, I got to show up in my pajamas in my third trimester, and be a blue badass. I hope this gives me a little bit of cool points with my kids one day.”
Sourdough, what a bread! The cavernous texture — equal parts chewy and bubbly — the crispy, complex, almost roasted flavors of the crust, and that characteristic sour finish combine to make something that, at its best, is truly special. And while the idea of a “best type of bread” is ridiculous (certain breads are good for certain meals), if I could only eat one type of bread for the rest of my life, I’d pick sourdough without even giving it a second thought. If you want to make the greatest grilled cheese sandwich, avocado toast, or a bread bowl that’ll taste better than the soup inside, look to sourdough! Hell, even dipping a piece of sourdough in good olive oil is a flavor-bomb experience.
Great sourdough is a work of art (remember the start of the pandemic when everyone was literally trying to master the art of making sourdough?) and as such if you want to buy the best sourdough bread you’ll ever eat in your life, you’re going to have to find a respected baker in your area. But not everyone has that kind of access, time, or extra money — which is where grocery store sourdough comes into play. Grocery store sourdough bread is cheap and easily accessible. Unfortunately, it’s not always real sourdough. The reason a loaf of authentic sourdough will cost you a pretty penny is that proper sourdough takes time to produce. True sourdough is naturally leavened by way of wild yeast that feeds on a combination of flour, water, and salt in order to rise naturally. Most grocery store brands, on the other hand, use ingredients like commercial yeast to speed up the production time, sugar, as both a flavorer and preservative, and other additives that keep loaves shelf stable for longer stretches.
With sourdough bread, the fewer ingredients, the better. And that’s a sniff test many supermarket brands don’t pass. So in order to separate the good from the trash, we’re putting some mainstream loaves to the blind taste test.
Methodology
For this blind taste test, I rounded up eight loaves of sourdough bread from Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Target, and Vons (a California Market owned by Albertson’s). While each loaf looked drastically different they were all labeled and advertised as “sourdough” bread. Here is today’s tasting class:
Francisco International — Extra Sourdough
Inked Organics — Rosie’s San Francisco Bay Sourdough
San Luis Sourdough — Sourdough Cracked Wheat
Signature Select — Artisan Sourdough Bread
Sunflour Bakery — Wyoming Sourdough
Trader Joe’s — Sourdough Bread Sliced
Trader Joe’s — Sourdough Sandwich Bread
Whole Foods 365 — Sourdough Sandwich Bread
For the tasting, I had my girlfriend toast eight slices, two at a time, four rounds of tastings, and tried each slice plain. I considered adding butter but ultimately I decided that would probably be a distraction and I wanted to experience each of these loaves for what they were.
Let’s taste!
Part 1: The Sourdough Bread Tasting
Taste 1:
Dane Rivera
Roasted nuts on the nose, this bread has a light and bright buttery flavor with a subtle hit of tang at the finish. The crust is slightly nutty and cracked. Nice start!
Taste 2:
Dane Rivera
Significantly more sour than Taste 1. You can smell that sourness wafting off the bread! The texture is stiff and a bit hard to chew through, the finish hits you with a subtle sour taste. The crust is nicely cracked with a roasted flavor.
Taste 3:
Dane Rivera
Incredibly oily to the touch, almost as if it’s been buttered. This essentially tastes like white bread — it’s neutral, a bit sweet, with a fluffy texture. If I strain to taste it, I get a slightly sour flavor from it, but it doesn’t really track to my tastebuds as sourdough. If I didn’t know this was sourdough bread, I would assume it’s Wonder Bread.
Let’s hope this is the bottom!
Taste 4:
Dane Rivera
Stale bland flavor but at least it finishes sour. The bread is thin and there isn’t any chew or air to it, it’s almost like a cracker.
Taste 5:
Dane Rivera
A sharp tang immediately hits the palate at first bite. Chewing through it reveals a sweet buttery flavor. The texture is slightly chewy and the finish is sour and lingers on the tongue. Enough so that I had to drink some water before my next tasting.
Taste 6:
Dane Rivera
A very mild sourdough. I’m only getting a mild sour flavor but the texture is on point. It’s chewy, bubbly, with a nice toasted crust flavor that brings some caramelized sweetness and depth to the flavor. I like it.
Taste 7:
Dane Rivera
Yeasty with a nice chew. The crust is cracked and nutty and the sour component of the bread is very light but present. Good, not great.
Taste 8:
Dane Rivera
By the time I got to Taste 8, I was starting to get worried. As I make preliminary tasting notes, I always rate a product via a five-star rating. I admit, this isn’t a perfect method, but I usually get to what I consider a “five” by mid-tasting, but here we were at the final taste and I had a bunch of twos, threes, and fours. No fives. I started to think maybe my standards for good sourdough bread were unreasonably high.
Lucky Taste 8 saved the day.
This bread tastes the closest to true sourdough. The texture is perfect, chewy, bubbly, with a cavernous surface that would be perfect for butter to pool into. There is just the subtlest sweetness to the flavor, backed by nutty notes and a prominent sour flavor that lives on both the initial and aftertaste. The crust is slightly caramelized and chewy. Easy five out of five here!
Part 2: The Sourdough Bread Ranking
8. Francisco International — Extra Sourdough (Taste 3)
There is something ironic about Francisco International making obvious reference to San Francisco, the sourdough capital, and coming dead last in a blind taste test. Though, calling this “sourdough bread” in the first place is a stretch.
This bread is made with white flour, folic acid, water, yeast, and vegetable oil (which explains its oily texture). Yeast, not “sourdough starter” or “sourdough base,” which means it’s explicitly not sourdough. In an additional layer of irony, Francisco International isn’t just calling this “sourdough,” they’ve dubbed it “extra sourdough.” Extra! In what sense? Extra mediocre?
The Bottom Line:
George Santos in bread form. It’s nothing it says it is.
Whole Foods’ version of sourdough bread is incredibly stale, flat, and barely sour. It’s made with a lot of ingredients that shouldn’t be there, like cane sugar, expeller pressed palm oil, yeast, and distilled white vinegar but at least it has a sourdough base in there, which is something right?
This is probably the most shelf-stable sourdough on the market, and while it leaves a lot to be desired at least Whole Foods has a variety of other options that get you in the ballpark of real sourdough bread.
The Bottom Line:
Reach for one of the other brands Whole Foods has stocked on its shelves, you’ll get a better loaf out of it.
Another brand carried by Whole Foods, Sunflour’s Wyoming Sour Bread is made with unbleached wheat flour, malted barley flour, water, sourdough base, cultured wheat flour, yeast, sea salt, canola oil, and sugar. Those last two ingredients gift us pause, but the flavor is on point.
I’m a bit puzzled by this one, the ingredients listed include unbleached flour, water, and salt, there is no yeast, which is a good thing, but also no sourdough starter or sourdough base listed. Is it sourdough? What’s making it rise? What the hell is going on here?
Puzzling as the ingredients list is, this is pretty good bread. It tastes like sourdough should and has the right chewy texture, and is made with as few ingredients as possible. But it seems to be missing a crucial one…
The Bottom Line:
Is it sourdough? Is it even bread? I don’t know if Trader Joe’s just messed up on the ingredients list but the fact that “sourdough starter” isn’t listed should give people pause.
Again, this isn’t sourdough, it is made with unbleached wheat flour, water, salt, yeast, distilled vinegar, soybean oil, ascorbic acid, and a bunch of other things that aren’t sourdough starter. It has sesame seeds in it, which is a nice touch, but sesame seeds don’t belong in sourdough bread, sourdough starter does.
This bread is advertised as being fermented for up to “eight hours,” and I suppose that’s something! But to dub it “artisan,” is pure marketing jargon.
Having said all of that, this tastes good. I don’t hate it. I hate that it’s wrongly dubbed sourdough, but at the end of the day, if you make me a piece of avocado toast on this stuff, I will love it.
The Bottom Line:
A good bread with a nice chew and a sour flavor. It’s not sourdough, but it is bread… and we guess that’s something.
3. Inked Organics — Rosie’s San Francisco Bay Sourdough (Taste 1)
Inked Organics keeps things natural and has one of the shorter ingredient lists of the brands we tried for this tasting. The sourdough is made from wheat flour, filtered water, organic sourdough starter, sea salt, whole wheat flour, cultured organic wheat flour, natural enzymes, and ascorbic acid. The extra ingredients in there are to keep this stuff as shelf-stable as possible.
As a result, it’s pretty good stuff.
The Bottom Line:
Light and buttery with a soft tangy finish. Good sourdough that is made well, but if you like a sharp tang, a good chew, and a flavorful crust, this one doesn’t quite cut it.
Trader Joe’s has a variety of store-branded sourdough. At TJ’s you get what you get, sometimes this variety of sourdough bread is there on store shelves, sometimes it’s not. If it is, grab the “sandwich bread” over the sliced variety.
This sourdough is made from wheat flour, malted barley flour, water, sourdough starter, and salt. That’s a solid list and unlike the “sliced” version, doesn’t leave us scratching our heads wondering how it managed to rise.
The Bottom Line:
Trader Joe’s “sliced” sourdough bread looks more delicious than its “sandwich bread” version, but this is a lot closer to real sourdough so pick this up instead. The presentation will suffer in the process, but at least this will probably fit in your toaster better.
1. San Luis Sourdough — Sourdough Cracked Wheat (Taste 8)
The oceanside city of San Luis Obispo California isn’t known for sourdough bread, but maybe it should be. San Luis Sourdough is by far the best grocery store sourdough bread I’ve tried. It’s perfectly chewy and bubbly, with a prominent sourdough flavor, and a crispy caramelized crust. It meets the flavor profile of actual sourdough, and I’m happy to see the production process is adequately laborious.
The bread is made from wheat flour, folic acid, water, cracked wheat sourdough starter, and salt, and it takes 30 hours to make a single loaf. That’s what we like to see! That extra production time is more than worth it. San Luis even suggests that you bring this bread back to its true state by throwing it in a 350-degree oven for three to five minutes to reinvigorate its crunchy texture.
I didn’t do that for this taste test, but I definitely will do it going forward!
The Bottom Line:
If you want the best sourdough bread your money can buy from the mainstream grocer, make it San Luis Sourdough. It’s chewy, bubbly, full of flavor and complexity, and has a perfect crust.
The only thing better than a bright, refreshing IPA on a hot summer’s day is the same beer with actual real citrus fruits added to it. There are very few flavors that work better than tangerine, lime, grapefruit, or lemon paired with floral, herbal, and pine-filled IPA profiles. But adding actual fruit to a beer is fairly tricky. Don’t add enough and it barely tastes like the fruit highlighted on the can. Add too much and it more resembles a Radler than a beer. The key is finding that sweet spot where hops and citrus flavors intermingle to create a perfect, crushable warm weather beer.
We understand that if you’ve never tried any citrus fruited IPAs, the thought of simply grabbing a sixer without any background is a fairly daunting task. You could love it or you could absolutely loathe its over-the-top flavors. So we’re here to help.
We’ve tried countless citrus-fruited IPAs and found eight of the best. These IPAs feature grapefruit, tangerine, mandarin oranges, and even extra fruits like passionfruit and pineapple. Keep scrolling to see them all.
This tart, citrus-driven IPA is brewed with light Crystal malt and a ton of Simcoe, Citra, and Centennial hops. While that would be all well and good, the brewers at Blue Mountain took the citrus aspect one step further by adding natural orange flavoring to heighten the experience.
Tasting Notes:
On the nose, you’ll find a ton of tangerine and lightly floral, herbal, piney hops. But nothing else to speak of. Drinking it reveals more orange peel, grapefruit, and grassy, floral, lightly bitter hops. The finish has more orange and just a hint of pine. Overall, a bit muted in the flavor department though.
Bottom Line:
This is a subtle, refreshing citrus-filled beer. It’s not overly hoppy though and is actually a little thin and watery.
This 5.5% ABV IPA gets its tart, bright, refreshing flavor from the addition of ruby red grapefruit zest. It’s known for its piney, hoppy, lightly bitter flavor that pairs well with the slightly sour, acidic, sweet grapefruit flavor.
Tasting Notes:
Pine and grapefruit are big on the nose. Sadly, there’s nothing else to be found. The palate continues this trend. Drinking it reveals freshly squeezed grapefruit, orange peels, and a ton of pine at the finish. The ending is tart and lightly bitter. It’s crisp and refreshing, but a little one-dimensional.
Bottom Line:
This is a bit of a one-trick pony. If you don’t enjoy a healthy kick of grapefruit, you really won’t like this beer. It’s about as subtle as a grapefruit-slathered sledgehammer.
This 6.7% ABV hazy IPA is more than simply a juicy, citrus, and tropical fruit-filled banger. It literally has real citrus and tropical fruit added to it. It’s brewed with Magnum, Centennial, Citra, Sterling, Mosaic, Simcoe, Cascade, and Azacca hops as well as tangerine and pineapple puree.
Tasting Notes:
A nose of artificial orange, tropical fruits, lemon candy, and floral, earthy pine greets you before your first sip. The palate is filled with sweet malts, ripe peaches, caramelized pineapple, tangerine pulp, and bright pine. The finish is a mix of bitterness and sweetness.
Bottom Line:
This is a decent fruited IPA. It just has a bit of a generic, artificial flavor. Like they made a beer that was supposed to taste the way orange candy tastes, as opposed to actual orange.
Often, when we crack open hazy, New England-style IPAs, they already taste like fruity juice bombs. They’re sweet, cloudy, and have little to no bitterness on the backend. The brewers at 7 Seas saw this and decided to one-up it with the addition of blood orange and passionfruit.
Tasting Notes:
The nose is tropical fruit through and through. There’s a ton of passionfruit, orange peel, and lime zest on the nose. There are also some sweet malts and flora, herbal hops. The palate adds to this with some creamy sweetness from flaked oats and flaked wheat as well as juicy pineapple, passionfruit, tangerine, and lime zest. The finish is sweet, tart, and highly memorable.
Bottom Line:
This is a sublimely fruity beer. That being said, it leans very heavily in that direction. If you’re looking for more balance and more hop presence, this isn’t the beer for you.
This 6.8% ABV IPA is the popular brewery’s updated take on its beloved Modus Hoperandu IPA. This version is ramped up by being dry-hopped with Mandarina Bavaria hops. If that wasn’t enough, it gets an added citrus zing from the use of sweet orange peels.
Tasting Notes:
Aromas of clementines, tangerines, and candied orange peels are big on the nose. There’s also a good whiff of dank, piney hops as well. The palate continues this start. There’s a lot of tangerine, biscuit-like malts, lemongrass, piney, grassy hops. The finish is a nice mix of citrus sweetness and light bitterness.
Bottom Line:
The use of Mandarina Bavaria and orange peels make this a great IPA for orange fans. But it’s also just a great beer if you enjoy IPAs.
There are few IPAs as popular as Ballast Point Sculpin. But you might be surprised to learn that the grapefruit version is almost as popular. They start with Ballast Points well-known, piney, bitter IPA and they add tart, tangy, sweet grapefruit juice.
Tasting Notes:
While grapefruit is definitely at the forefront. This beer is definitely not one-dimensional. The nose also has sweet malts, orange peels, and herbal, floral, and pine. The palate is similar. Fresh, tart, tangy grapefruit gets the party started. Then comes freshly cut grass, lemon, caramel malt, and piney, bitter hops. The tart grapefruit and bitter hops work together in perfect unison.
Bottom Line:
If you enjoy bitter, piney IPAs with a nice kick of citrus, this is the beer for you. It’s very well-balanced and refreshing on a hot day.
This complex, balanced IPA was brewed with Cascade, Chinook, Crystal, and Columbus hops. That might seem like enough to create a bright, hoppy beer. But the brewers at Karl Strauss add kilned caramel malts and tangerine puree.
Tasting Notes:
The nose is a gentle mix of tangerine peels, lemongrass, candied orange peel, caramel malts, and floral, piney hops. The palate is all citrus with tart grapefruit, ripe tangerine, and lemon making big appearances. This is followed by more caramel malts and herbal, earthy, spicy hops. The finish is a mix of citrus peels and piney, bitter hops.
Bottom Line:
For an IPA with such a massive amount of citrus flavor, this is a surprisingly well-rounded IPA. One sip and you’ll want to drink it all summer long.
1) Lawson’s Finest Double Sunshine Ruby Red Grapefruit
If you’re a double IPA fan, you’ve probably enjoyed your fair share of Lawson’s Finest Double Sunshine IPAs. Well, the folks at the popular Vermont brewery decided that beer wasn’t flavorful enough for some drinkers. That’s why they created a Double Sunshine Ruby Red Grapefruit, an IPA brewed with ruby red grapefruit peels.
Tasting Notes:
The nose is filled with ruby-red grapefruit. But there’s also ripe peach, pineapple, and orange. Add floral, earthy, and very herbal hops and you have a great start. The palate continues this trend with a ripe, tart grapefruit up front. This is followed by caramel malts, tangerine, caramelized pineapple, and other tropical fruits before finishing gently bitter and pleasantly tart.
Bottom Line:
You’d have a tough time finding a better citrus-forward fruited IPA than Lawson’s Finest Double Sunshine Ruby Red Grapefruit. The name might be a mouthful, but the flavor inside the can is even more.
June will officially bring us summertime, and you know what that means. The great outdoors will sound fantastic until humidity and buggy conditions begin to reign supreme, at which point you might be longing for your couch. The good news? There will always be too much TV for the taking. This can be an overwhelming prospect, so we have rounded up ten options worth putting in your queues, so hopefully, at least a few of them will work for you.
Succession and Barry will be over in June, this is true, but HBO will fill those spots with The Idol and And Just Like That…. Disney+ will also have another show to tie together various parts of the MCU, and Netflix will finish what NBC started with Manifest. As well, AMC will launch the first of its new The Walking Dead spinoffs with the unlikely team-up of Maggie and Negan. There’s plenty more on tap too, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that The Bear will be back to stress you the hell out, and you’ll thank those Chefs for the pleasure. Here are the must see shows for June 2023.
Manifest: Season 4 Part II (Netflix series streaming on 6/2)
This proud mess of a sci-fi soap opera is preparing to descend for Flight 828’s final landing on Netflix, years after NBC cancelled the show. Of course, that means that creator Jeff Rake’s original six-season vision turned into four seasons, which means that he’s got a whole lot of loose ends to tie up with the final episodes. Will anyone ever expect this show to make much sense while explaining why five years passed in the blink of an eye for passengers while the world went on living while they were supposedly missing? In the aftermath, we’ve seen cult nonsense and people spurting water for no reason and talk of Death Dates, and now, we’re going to see some Ghost Zeke, which will probably make no one mad, so there.
The Idol: Season 1 (HBO series premiering on 6/4)
Surely, you’ve heard at least some of the controversy surrounding this show from Euphoria creator Sam Levinson and Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye. The latter stars as a cult leader who literally and figuratively seduces Jocelyn, an it-girl pop star portrayed by Lily-Rose Depp. The critics are absolutely not into this series following the first two episodes premiering at Cannes, but no one ever expected subtlety from Sam Levinson. Let’s hope that a bit of substance will eventually emerge from within the style, but people will certainly be watching, at least to begin.
The Lazarus Project: Season 1 (TNT series streaming on 6/4)
I May Destroy You fan favorite Paapa Essiedu heads into sci-fi territory in this U.K.-borne series about a protagonist, George, who wakes up one day to discover that he’s six months in the past. No one in his life seems to notice this discrepancy that might turn out to be apocalyptic in nature, and then George gets sucked into a shadowy organization called (you guessed it) The Lazarus Project. Expect plenty of action as a side dish to the main course of intrigue, so this should perform well.
Based On A True Story: Season 1 (Peacock series streaming on 6/8)
Kaley Cuoco has already proven that audiences and critics underestimated her sheer level of talent, and not only that, but she’s been working her butt off ever since the Big Bang Theory wrapped up. With The Flight Attendant and Harley Quinn success under her belt, Cuoco has turned to the true crime realm to portray a wife who’s obsessed with the genre to such a degree that she finds a local serial killer’s proximity to be “exciting.” Chris Messina is also on board as Cuoco’s partner in sniffing out crime. This series arrives from producers of The Boys and Ozark, if that tells you anything about how darkly comedic things will soon get for this show.
The Crowded Room: Season 1 (Apple TV+ series streaming on 6/9)
Back in 2015, Leonardo DiCaprio was reportedly set to star in a much earlier (and different) version of this story in which he would have played a defendant who invoked a legal defense that had never been successfully used before. The crimes in question (tied to a real-life case) included a 1970s robbery and more. Apple TV+ has now adapted this story as a fictionalized, inspired-by-real-life series created by Akiva Goldsman (Oscar winner for A Beautiful Mind screenplay). Tom Holland now portrays “Danny Sullivan,” who is arrested in connection with a late 1970s shooting, and the trailer lays out the story’s mysterious ways. It looks to be a gripping performance and certainly takes Holland out of the Marvel mindset. Co-stars include Amanda Seyfried, Emmy Rossum, Sasha Lane, and Lior Raz.
The Walking Dead: Dead City: Season 1 (AMC series debuting on 6/18)
Yes, Fear The Walking Dead is still reinventing itself (one more time) for its eighth and final season, but around midseason, the franchise’s new spinoffs will begin to bust through the walker-plagued walls. In this Manhattan-bound misadventure, Maggie will recruit Negan to help her rescue Hershel Rhees, son of Glenn and Maggie, obviously. Perhaps this will be a way for Negan to finally, fully redeem himself in Maggie’s eyes, but I won’t hold my breath for too long. Showrunner has promised some extra “disgusting” and “terrifying” walkers, and the trailer makes it look like there might be a variant that runs. Uh oh.
Secret Invasion: Season 1 (Disney+ series streaming on 6/21)
Nick Fury is having a not-so-great time with the “one last job” trope as he heads back into MCU hijinks for what might be his “one last fight.” We do live in unusual Hollywood times, and with Captain Marvel, the Skrulls somehow became the good guys, so we’ll see how Talos fares in this standalone series. Not only are Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn onboard, but Emilia Clarke and Olivia Colman also formally enter the MCU with this show, and we will apparently see some Rhodey on this “crossover event series,” too. Only enough, there’s some eye-patch-less Fury in the mix, so I hope we get some more Goose to add even more context.
The Bear (FX series premiering on 6/22)
Yes, Chef! Jeremy Allen White’s career soared to stratospheric (and A24-bound) heights after the first season of this sleeper series. Shameless fans are thrilled to finally see White hit his full (and intense) potential as a result, and
White’s career volleyed into the stratosphere after The Bear‘s first season showcased his intensity for the masses. Seriously, the resulting sex tweets were great fun for all, but this show also brought addictive substance to the table. This season, we’ll see Carmy attempt to reinvent The Beef into a slightly fancier restaurant with the help of sous chef Sydney, who I hope will stab Richie again. He deserves as much, and ideally, we’ll find out if Carmy gets busy in Season 2. An old flame will be on the scene, so it’s definitely possible. Let’s hope that if that happens, he doesn’t lose his drive in the kitchen.
And Just Like That…: Season 2 (HBO Max series streaming on 6/22)
Che Diaz is back, baby. Yet they are only one of several reasons why Season 1 of this revival turned out to be a horror show (with Death By Peloton) worth watching. I’m still not convinced that any of the other new characters resonated much due to the surface-level writing, but Che struck a chord, and the remaining central trio — Carrie, Samantha, and Charlotte — still managed to engross Sex And The City‘s audience who enjoy checking in every now and then to see things “fall spectacularly to pieces.” This revival wasn’t meant to be taken too seriously, and frothy delights are worth the indulgence, too.
The Witcher: Season 3 Vol. 1 (Netflix series streaming on 6/29)
Henry Cavill has one foot out the door of this franchise, which is unfortunate, but we’ll see what Liam Hemsworth brings to the table in the future. Further, this season will apparently bring us (from the looks of the above teaser) plenty of banger-filled Jaskier with newfound eyeliner. Ideally, this means that the show will go ahead and declare Jaskier canonically bisexual because they’ve been dancing around the issue long enough. And god only knows that the Netflix franchise has tweaked Andrzej Sapkowski books and the video games enough over the years already, so what’s one more time?
Black Mirror: Season 6 (Netflix series streaming TBA)
Four years after Charlie Brooker’s brainchild gave us the endless permutations of Bandersnatch, a full season will soon arrive because we simply don’t have enough technologically-fueled existential crises in our own world right now. At the very least, this series always happens to feel prescient, but fortunately, each season has managed to contain standout episodes. This year, we’ll see appearances from Salma Hayek, Aaron Paul, Annie Murphy, Josh Hartnett, Michael Cera, Paapa Essiedu, Rob Delaney, Rory Culkin, Zazie Beetz, and many more. Get ready to feel anxious for them.
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This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
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