Explorer Cold Brew Concentrate Travel 12-Pack, On The Go Iced or Hot Coffee, 12 Servings, Perfect For Air Travel, Pure & Unsweetened Black, (6 Low Caf / 6 No Caf)

I absolutely love this coffee ☕️ it’s the best!

So easy to just pour over ice and add milk. I got fancy with it adding over ice in a shaker cup with a touch of vanilla extract, dash of cinnamon, and a little sweetened condensed milk. Shook that bad boy up and poured in my cup to take to work for about a week straight. So convenient!

I can’t tell you how much my husband and I enjoyed this nice variety pack he of course wanted all the caffeine, and I leaned toward no caffeine, and low caffeine I love that it’s great for coffee lovers of all kinds.. so good, and love the bottles included

I’m torn about the bottles but ultimately I think these might be better in plastic bottles. The draw of individually packaged concentrate is to have it when you travel. Glass bottles are heavier and less likely to have a recycling receptacle. They are also more inclined to breaking (though I haven’t experienced that yet). The glass bottles do add something and make it seem more special so I understand why they’ve done it, it’s just not as practical. Also, billing glass bottles as “greener” feels like greenwashing. Yes glass is more recyclable than plastic but a lot of places don’t offer glass recycling as an option and overall it’s a pretty energy intensive process. They DO have a takeback program for the bottles but it sounds like they don’t re-use them, they send them to be recycled. So the “green” option, if you dont have glass recycling near you, is to ship them back (more emissions) and then they send them to a recycling facility (more emissions). I don’t know the math on this, and it would probably depend on where you live, so it’s unclear if it’s better or worse than plastic. Also the amount of people who take part in that program is probably few because it’s more work on the consumer and consumers are lazy even if they care about the environment.

As far as flavor goes, it’s pretty good. I like cold brew because it’s less bitter. The decaf tastes decent. I drink a lot of coffee (cold brew, drip and espresso).

Some other claims:
– They offset emissions – there are no notes about how they do that. Which organization do they use for it? Shipping concentrate does use less emissions than fully mixed cold brew so that’s good but otherwise, where is the backup for this claim?
– Fair trade and organic – they DO name the unions that they work with but they DO NOT name any sort of fair trade certification. No certification or overseeing body means they can claim it’s fair trade till the cows come home but there is no oversight. I also saw no organic certification.
– They donate “a percentage” to charity – they DO name the charity which is great. They DO NOT name the percentage. It could be 0.
001% and it would still be a true claim. They DO have a spot on their website that shows the current tally of how much has been donated in total though so that’s great and transparent.

Overall they don’t strike me as strictly a green-washing company. I think it’s important to check in on claims though, no matter how much you like the company. Their first twitter post is from June 2020 so I imagine they are a younger company. Maybe with more time and revenue they can invest in backing up their claims a little more fully. I suspect that things like fair trade certifications aren’t easy or cheap to do.

Awesome product. Really simple and easy to make. Blended well with peppermint mocha creamer!