Starbucks Refresha Cool Lime & Berry Hibiscus Green Coffee

I love new drinks from Starbucks. I love the fact that they bring out new drinks in the summer and at Christmastime. OK they don't make the best coffee in the world but for novelty iced drinks you can't beat them.

The new Starbucks Refresha is unusual because is it made with Green Coffee Extract.  It is advertised as being a thirst-quenching refreshment with caffeine but without the coffee taste. The inclusion of green coffee was intriguing. I'm a big drinker of green tea but I have never tried green coffee. Green coffee is simply the name given to coffee beans which have not yet been roasted. These coffee beans still have a greenish tinge and none of the coffee taste or smell we expect from roasted coffee beans.

Starbucks are no doubt capitalising on the weight loss rumblings surrounding Green Coffee Extract (that it can block fat absorption and stimulate the metabolism). Starbucks certainly don't make any claim to weight loss with this product but it's good to know that it's a "low-calorie pick-me-up" since many of the iced coffee drinks out there are loaded with sugar.

I had this drink on an extremely hot day in London which was a good test for its "thirst-quenching" claims. In the Starbucks I visited nearly every customer was ordering one of these Refresha drinks. 

The Cool Lime variety was especially popular and turned out to be my favourite. This drink is a blend of lime, with hints of mint and cucumber, shaken with real lime slices. There was no overpowering lime taste and even though the drink had a sweetness, it was not sugary at all. In fact the taste of mint leaves and cucumber was more prominent. The Green Coffee Extract gave it a slightly earthy taste but I couldn't detect any coffee flavour at all. Best of all it was very refreshing!


 

The second Refresha drink is the Berry Hibiscus. This is a combination of fruit juices shaken with whole blackberries and Green Coffee Extract. There are bits of blackberry fruit in this one so you occasionally feel the seeds in your mouth as you are drinking. The whole taste is very much like an iced herbal tea rather than a coffee. The Berry Hibiscus Refresha drink is sweeter than the Cool Lime Refresha. 





These drinks won't give you the same 'coffee' hit as a regular iced coffee drink but they are a much lighter drink which makes them very thirst quenching. These Refresha drinks are great for hot weather but it's a shame that sunny days are rare in the UK!