Coffee Soda 

What Is Coffee Soda?

Think more coffee, less soda. Third wave coffee shops have been playing around with carbonated coffee for years, from nitro cold brew to coffee tonic, so it should come as little shock that this summer’s trendiest coffee drink is yet another type of carbonated cold coffee known as coffee soda. But what is coffee soda, exactly? The easiest way to describe coffee soda is as carbonated iced coffee, but this drink is often more complex than that. Imagine an iced coffee cocktail except without the booze—not the bottles of jet-black Manhattan Special, the OG coffee soda that’s been manufactured in Brooklyn, NY, since 1895.

And this is part of the confusion about this summer’s trendiest drink. Unlike a latte or an Americano or even nitro cold brew, there is no one standard recipe, so every coffee shop makes their coffee soda a little bit differently. At most places…