Can Coffee Make You Feel Drunk? Lessons From Milk Baijiu

ChaPanda launched a milk baijiu series with Milk Baijiu Oolong and Milk Baijiu Mochi Milk Green for the autumn and winter season. The brand says the drinks use fermented glutinous rice with no flavorings or additives, but consumers reported the taste was too sweet and the alcohol note too mild. Some called the aroma strange.

Milk baijiu mixes sweet fermented rice into fresh iced milk, softening the alcohol's bite. The fermented rice juice is brewed over 120 hours and filtered twice. The episode is a reminder that the question of whether coffee can make you feel drunk usually points to flavor and expectation, not actual alcohol content, in most café drinks.

As demand for autumn and winter beverages heats up, ChaPanda has launched a milk baijiu series, including Milk Baijiu Oolong and Milk Baijiu Mochi Milk Green. The official line emphasizes traditional fermented glutinous rice craftsmanship, 0 flavorings, and no additives, but consumers who tried it reported that it was too sweet, the alcohol taste was too mild, and some even described the aroma as strange. This article reviews the new products' formulas, craft features, and market response, and looks back at ChaPanda's previous alcoholic drink attempt in collaboration with Luzhou Laojiao. For coffee lovers, Front Street Coffee always pays attention to beverage innovation trends, and this article also offers observations from the perspective of flavor balance.

As the weather gradually turns cooler, consumer demand for autumn and winter hot drinks is also rising. Recently, new tea beverage brand ChaPanda announced the launch of a milk baijiu series. Official information shows that the two new products are "Milk Baijiu Oolong" and "Milk Baijiu Mochi Milk Green."

Milk baijiu is originally a quite representative drink in Yunnan. A common way to make it is to mix sweet fermented glutinous rice into fresh ice milk. The rich smoothness of the milk and the soft, glutinous texture of the fermented rice complement each other, making it refreshing on entry with a long finish. At the same time, the mellow sweetness of the milk can weaken the spiciness of the alcohol, making the overall sweetness more pronounced, and a cup of it feels especially comforting.

ChaPanda officially states that both milk baijiu products use mellow fermented glutinous rice, with 0 flavorings and no additives. The production of the fermented glutinous rice continues part of the traditional brewing process and uses a dedicated fermented glutinous rice production line, with two additional filtration steps intended to make the fermented rice juice flavor purer. During brewing, ko-lin is used, with a fermentation time of 120 hours, allowing the aroma of alcohol and rice to blend over time into the sweet fragrant flavor of the drink.

Among them, "Milk Baijiu Oolong" consists of fermented glutinous rice juice, a milk base, and an oolong tea base, with no toppings, making its style relatively "pure." The other, "Milk Baijiu Mochi Milk Green," is richer in content. In addition to fermented glutinous rice and a fresh milk tea base, it also adds sweet osmanthus, rice mochi, and a jasmine snow bud tea base.

This is not ChaPanda's first foray into alcoholic milk tea. As early as 2020, ChaPanda teamed up with Luzhou Laojiao to launch "Drunken Step on the Road," each cup containing 3 grams of 40-proof Luzhou Laojiao Baijiu.

With its unique taste and creativity, the product once attracted a large amount of consumer attention. However, it is said that due to a conflict with another new product from Luzhou Laojiao's Baijiu company, it later had to be temporarily removed from the market. To this day, many consumers still leave messages on social media and ChaPanda's official website hoping the brand will bring back "Drunken Step on the Road."

Therefore, when news of the new milk baijiu launch came out, fans rushed to place orders, trying to recapture a wonderful experience similar to the "old alcoholic drink." However, both consumers who love drinking and those who do not were left "silent."

First, most customers found "Milk Baijiu Oolong" too sweet. The drink has three unadjustable aspects (ice level unadjustable, sweetness unadjustable, temperature unadjustable). Some said they had noted when ordering that no extra sugar should be added, but after a few sips their mouths were still full of pure sugar taste, so they could only dilute the sweetness by pouring in mineral water. Some consumers even specially did blood sugar tests and found that after finishing the drink within half an hour, their overall blood sugar rose by 5.6, a sugar content that deterred some health-conscious consumers.

On the other hand, for customers who like fermented glutinous rice, the alcohol flavor of these two milk baijiu products is too mild, and the aroma produced after ChaPanda mixes fermented glutinous rice, sweet milk, and tea is somewhat strange. The sourness of fermented glutinous rice has been jokingly called by some netizens "the smell of expired milk" or "the sourness of spoiled chestnuts." Judging from overall taste reviews online, it is really a bit regrettable.

From this it can be seen that after losing the Luzhou Laojiao collaboration, if ChaPanda wants to go further in the alcoholic milk tea track, it still has a long way to go, whether in brewing technology or formula development.

Image source: Internet

The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.