Last year, Cacaopod and I started doing regular coffee walks. We stop at one of Oakland’s many cafés/coffee shops and get a cappuccino or latte to go, then walk around the shop’s neighborhood. We started in the spring when everything was blooming after our intense winter rains and there were so many spectacular gardens to see. We have continued our walks since then enjoying the visual changes the seasons bring. It’s a new favorite habit.
COBA, The Coffee Bar, a Berkeley based business, offers a different take on coffee walks — instead of a cup of joe you can take your coffee in a 2″ square of white chocolate instead. If you don’t mind not having the whole coffee experience there are some upsides to a coffee bar: No potential hot liquid mishaps, no worries about your coffee getting cold before you finish, and no cup to deal with — either adding waste to the landfill or having to carry a reusable cup home to wash it.
Starting in 2018 with The Espresso Bar, COBA has expanded to include 3 tea based bars. The bars are all white chocolate with an amount of their caffeine component (espresso, matcha, hojicha, or black tea) equal to a cup of coffee/tea. The Chai Bar has spices and other ingredients to give it a chai flavor but the other bars are 2 ingredients only.
So what’s The Coffee Bar experience like? Not what I expected for starters.
The Espresso Bar
We started with the original bar that COBA funded production of with a KickStarter campaign. The Espresso Bar had a good coffee aroma and looked like a milk chocolate square with visible texture from the coffee powder mixed in.
The initial hit was bitter which surprised me because it was a white chocolate couverture. It was coffee forward but a sugared strong coffee with a granulated sugar/coffee grounds gritty texture. I didn’t mind the texture but the bar was too bitter tasting for me.
There are so many espresso/coffee and chocolate options out there that I was disappointed that this was not more of a flavorful coffee chocolate experience. I feel like this bar is more about getting a measured amount of caffeine in a convenient form instead of the coffee experience or an enjoyable chocolate. Like if you drink coffee for the caffeine not the taste.
Maybe there is enough of a market for this take on coffee in chocolate but I think they could try other methods to widen the appeal. Maybe a coffee infusion instead of or in addition to the inclusion. Or they could try different beans/roasts to have different levels like chocolate makers do with different cacao percentages and adding milk/milk alternatives for different experiences.
The Chai Bar
The Chai Bar was a tan color and the first impression was sweet which was not unexpected or unwelcome since it was a chai tea flavored bar. It had the same grainy but not unpleasantly so texture of The Espresso Bar.
I liked this bar better. Flavored with cinnamon, clove, cardamom, anise, and ginger, it had a mild chai taste that also vaguely reminded me of the sugary shell and milk chocolate combo of M&Ms. The ingredients list included both black tea powder and Darjeeling tea which made for a good black tea taste under the spices and milky white chocolate. This became the bar I liked best of the 4.
The Matcha Bar
The Matcha Bar was a dark olive green color. It started a little bitter then mellowed as it melted and finally ended bitter.
It had a distinct matcha tea flavor and was less sweet than the other 2 bars. Except for the bitter aftertaste, I liked this bar almost as much as The Chai Bar.
The Hojicha Bar
The Hojicha Bar is made with a roasted green tea called hojicha. It was a brown colored square that looked like dark chocolate. I don’t think I have had hojicha tea before so I didn’t know what to expect.
It did not taste like it looked — definitely not dark chocolate — or even a green tea variant for that matter. It had a very unusual roasted, savory, mushroom-y taste. I liked this bar the least of COBA’s 4 options. Maybe if you like hojicha as a tea this one would work for you.
Other coffee options
COBA also makes coffee concentrates in Original, Mint, and Vanilla flavors but since there’s zero chocolate in those I didn’t try them. They are available on their website site along with the COBA bars.
Of the bars the only one I would buy again was The Chai Bar. I liked their chai spice combination and strong black tea in the white chocolate.
If they were to tinker with The Espresso Bar to reduce the bitterness, I’d give it another go — but only for those occasions when I’m going for a walk where there are no coffee shops. On the streets of Oakland and the rest of SFBA I think I will stick to my cups of for-real cappuccino.
