You know a coffee company's out to serve up ass-whooping drinks when their menu includes beverages named things like the "Annihilator" and "Double Torture." Dutch Bros. -- an upstart company with drive-thru locations in Nevada, Oregon, Arizona, and other southwestern states -- seems to have made it the company's mission to serve high-octane coffees that kick the crap out of other brands. This week, we tried one of Dutch Bros.' more extreme-sounding coffees, the ER-911. The brew is available hot or iced, and since it's hotter than a whore's bottom on a lake of fire in Phoenix right now, we went with the iced version. (By the way, we hit up the location on east Bell Road, but there's also a Dutch Bros. drive-thru being built at Central and Camelback).
Dutch Bros. ER-911
Looks like: Pretty standard, creamy brown iced coffee.
Smells like: A bag of fresh coffee grounds.
Tastes like: A potent, rich Irish cream coffee blend.
Caffeine and other contents: There are six shots of three-bean Irish cream espresso in the blend, which packs a massive caffeine wallop -- one 1.5 ounce shot of espresso contains roughly 77 mg of caffeine, so we're looking at about 462 mg of caffeine in a 20 ounce cup of ER-911. The coffee also contains the Dutch Bros.' super-secret "Kick Me Mix," which we can't find any information about anywhere because, well, it's secret.
Caffeine kick: Substantial, even for someone with a high caffeine tolerance. Drinking just half of the 20 ounce ER-911 within a two hour period provides a noticeable boost in mental alertness and could probably make some people shaky. But if good taste and an almost overwhelming energy boost is your bag, dig in!
