I Tried This Canned Espresso Martini (as a Former Bartender)

I’m old enough to remember a time when ordering an espresso martini would have seemed like a joke. A few years back, I was a bartender in a touristy seafood restaurant in San Francisco, shamefully shaking up what I deemed the tackiest cocktails imaginable for a clientele unworthy of such a mixologist as myself. I made plenty of lemon drops and certainly my fair share of cosmos—but I probably only whipped up enough espresso martinis to count on one hand.

Around 2020, though, the espresso-and-vodka-scented winds began to change. Chalk it up to the swing of the trend-ulum toward 90s nostalgia, wide availability of better coffee beans, or pandemic-induced mental illness, but there was no denying it. To the chagrin of bartenders everywhere, the espresso martini came back in a big way. 

And with the ubiquity of canned cocktails these days, now you can get just about anything you’d order at a bar neatly portioned and packaged, ready to dump over some ice to be enjoyed in the comfort of your own home. Hell, you can even get cocktails in Tide Pod form. Gin and tonic yogurt, anyone?

Add to that the completely bizarre aesthetic timeline we’re on, and here I am in the year of our lord 2024, sampling Bomani’s canned espresso martini—skinny, no less. Never mind that it’s 10AM and I’m at work. Duty calls!

The Test

I made sure to pop these in the fridge right away when I got them, and when I was gearing up to test it out, I threw a can in the freezer for a bit to get it super-chilled like I like my martinis. It was then I noticed a discrepancy between the cardboard packaging containing the cans and the cans themselves. The package advertises a “Skinny Espresso Martini,” but the cans themselves bear the label “Bomani Cold Buzz Original Alcohol-Infused Cold Brew Coffee.” Thank God! It’s not really an espresso martini after all. (Methinks Bomani executed a little rebrand to capitalize on the trend—I say good for them).

Straight out of the can, I was pleased to find it really does just taste like an alcohol-infused cold brew. There’s a good, strong coffee flavor with a slight sweetness (no added sugar, just “alcohol from sugar”), and no vodka, dairy, or other cocktail trappings in sight. That said, the package suggests enjoying it not only out of the can or over ice but also as part of a cocktail or with cream and sugar. I figured I would mix some up with a bit of cream (shaken hard with ice and strained), and I got a pretty pleasing creamy little coffee cocktail, if not a true espresso martini. 

Courtesy the author

I’m not a huge drinker these days, so I was grateful that, at 5.7% ABV, one martini-sized portion of Bomani didn’t get me nearly as twisted as a real martini would (did I mention it’s before noon and I’m at work?). The Bomani Skinny Espresso Martini is more on par with a beer or a hard seltzer than a canned cocktail, to say nothing of the caffeine content (“half a cup of coffee in each can”). Left in the freezer, this thing would have frozen up hard as a rock and probably exploded. 

Low ABV, low caffeine, low calorie—sure, my inner mixologist sees an abomination. But this canned espresso martini might not make a bad addition to my morning routine.