Ben & Jerry - Cold Brew Caramel Latte (7-11 Exclusive)

Cold Brew Caramel Latte - Cold Brew & Sweet Cream Ice Creams with Salted Caramel Swirls 

Editors Note:  This flavor has since been renamed Go-To Cold Brew.  It is still a 7-11 exclusive flavor.
 

I have traveled to New York City to visit my sister for the Thanksgiving holiday.  Part of my trip will involve eating a bunch of ice cream I can't find back home in Minnesota.  The first pint is notably from Ben & Jerry's.  Last year, they released a flavor called Cold Brew Caramel Latte and made it available only at 7-11 convenience stores.  They had a 7-11 partnership before with their Nutty Caramel Swirl flavor.  Well, I don't live near 7-11 stores anymore, so I had to wait until I traveled somewhere where there was a 7-11 in order to get it.  They do have 7-11's in Manhattan and I found this pint on the Upper East Side on the corner of 84th and York.  The flavor itself looks interesting.  It is a cold brew coffee with a caramel swirl.  Coffee with caramel is not a super common flavor combination but I have seen it a couple of times before -- once from Häagen-Dazs (Sweet Cream Coffee Caramel) and once from Ben & Jerry's (Coffee Caramel Buzz).  Both flavors are slightly different than this flavor and both flavors are no longer in each brand's rotation.  It will be fun to see what today's re-imagining of a coffee-and-caramel flavor looks like.

Removing the lid, I see a marbling of the cold brew coffee and sweet cream bases.  I can see some mild speckling of the coffee beans in the coffee sections.  In the first spoonful, the coffee flavoring has the distinct 'cold-brew'-like flavor.  It is a bit less better, a bit less 'roasted'.  It tastes good.  The marbling with sweet cream dilutes the flavor a bit and keeps it from getting to be too strong.  As I dig down into the pint, I start to pick up the caramel swirl.  It tastes quite good.  As I keep eating there is more and more caramel.  Perhaps this means there is a slight mixing issue, but to be honest, the caramel was so good that I didn't mind.  Plus, it wasn't like the caramel was all on the bottom -- it was just that probably two-thirds of it was in the bottom half.

This is a pretty good implementation of a coffee-caramel ice cream.  The use of a cold-brew and sweet cream base made it feel fresh because cold-brew ice creams are getting more popular these days.  I really enjoyed the caramel swirl.  As far as coffee-caramel blends go, I think I still prefer the Häagen-Dazs (Sweet Cream Coffee Caramel) but as I mentioned before that flavor is no longer available.  If you like coffee and caramel together and you live near a 7-11 convenience store, check this flavor out.