In reviewing these two drinks I made two mistakes. The first can I tried, for the Original Irish Cream variation, instructed me to “Shake well before opening.” And being normally a “follow the instructions” kinda guy…I did. After opening the can, I was left with cold brew coffee on my hand, all over the can, and all over the kitchen counter. I’m…not sure how that was supposed to add to my enjoyment of the drinking experience.
Once everything got cleaned up and I could actually sample it, well, I mean…the taste of Bailey’s Irish Cream is there. And the taste of coffee is arm in arm with it. And it’s passable, I suppose. They get major points for having real sugar in the thing and not sucralose or some other enzyme exuded by Satan. Although it is a LOT of Sugar—44% of your recommended daily allowance of sugar. And of course the RDA of sugar is whatever amount of sugar you like—chopped in half. Because biology doesn’t give a damn about what entertains us. Beyond that, there are no scary ingredients that I’ve never seen before/couldn’t pronounce.
I think the major strike against this flavor is in my head and I admit freely that I’m biased against this drink. Again, no fault of the drink—it’s just that I associate Bailey’s and coffee with being a warm drink, which adds to the pleasant experience of drinking it. And, of course, that it contains alcohol usually…which just goes to show what a horrible lush I am.
Now, in an attempt to space out my wrestling matches with large amounts of sugar, I drank the Irish Cream and the Salted Caramel variations on different days. That was my second mistake…because they seem incredibly similar. For one thing, I’m a big fan of salt. Jeni’s Salted Caramel ice cream is salty as hell, and I love it. So it’s very hard to have caramel that is too salty. This doesn’t taste that salty at all. In fact, it’s only slightly caramel. It tastes more like the Irish Cream than it does the caramel. Granted, it is a Bailey’s branded drink, so I’m not sure how off-target that is. But regardless, it’s not my favorite of the two although if you put them side by side in a blind taste test, I might be hard pressed to distinguish between the two. It does have less sugar, though…only 33% of your sugar RDA. So I suppose that’s something.
Granted, somebody else who isn’t a lush might have a better experience. Not to mention somebody who doesn’t bother to read instructions on a can. These were decent and I would not hesitate to grab one again if I saw in the wild…but I wouldn’t go out of my way to seek another out, either.
