Nitro cold brew coffee is the newest 'it drink' at coffee bars in Hong Kong

Remember a simpler time when sidling up to the counter at your local cafe and confidently ordering a flat white was the way of signalling your third wave coffee connoisseurship? Or those halcyon days, when all it took to impress your fellow brew buffs was to start quizzing the baristas about their recommended brewing methods for each single origin coffee bean lovingly chalked up on their menus? Alas, coffee nerds, the hottest java jargon right now is going cold – nitro-cold.

For once, Hong Kong has its finger on the pulse, with a handful of local coffee bars quickly catching onto the latest trend to hit their North American counterparts: cold brew coffee, turbo-charged with nitrogen. The result is a drink that looks suspiciously like beer, but tastes definitively like coffee. It’s not completely new – Portland-based Stumptown Coffee Roasters has been experimenting with the technique since 2013, and now provides coffee shops around the country with kegs of their signature cold brew, ready to be pulled through the nitrogen tap system into frosted pint glasses.

Videography by Tyrone Wu

We headed to Hazel & Hershey in Soho to find out more about the trend, and to sample a few half-pints of the stuff ourselves. If you are a fan of cold brew coffees and the natural sweetness it delivers, the nitro version is possibly even more agreeable – the nitrogen aerates the brew, giving the coffee an unusually rich mouth-feel that you’d normally associate with a fine milky microfoam. And the process does create a creamy head on top of the coffee, much like a freshly poured beer. What’s mesmerising to watch however, is how this layer appears to cascade like a waterfall down the sides of the glass. 

Style as well as substance? We’ll cheers to that. 

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Where to drink nitro cold brew coffee

Nitro cold brew at The Cupping Room in Sheung Wan | Photo courtesy of @cuppingroomhk on Instagram

Cupping Room, Shop LG/F, 299 Queen’s Road Central, Central; +852 2799-3398

18 Grams Wan Chai, Hoi Tao Court, 15-27 Cannon Street, Wan Chai; +852 2893-8988

Hazel & Hershey, 69 Peel Street, Central; +852 3106-0760 

TAP, 15 Hak Po Street, Mong Kok; +852 2468-2010

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