We Tried Jagermeister Chocolate And Coffee. Here's How It Went
Jägermeister has partnered with the Chicago-based coffee company Dark Matter to create coffee beans and a chocolate bar infused with Jäger's coffee-flavored liqueur (via Dark Matter Coffee). This might seem at first like a disgusting stunt designed only to gain attention rather than to actually taste good. Food and beverage companies are known to do this sort of thing to get clicks; Brach's turkey dinner-flavored candy corn is a good example of this phenomenon. However, there were some clues that made us hopeful that this product would transcend joke-food territory.
Dark Matter Coffee is a serious coffee roaster and chocolatier that makes premium products. It lists the provenance of all the ingredients it uses on its website and it works with its suppliers to ensure the quality of what it produces. Jägermeister, despite its reputation as trashy party fuel, is made using a careful old-world process that takes more than a year.
We had to see if the Jägermeister chocolate and coffee were delicious or disgusting. Were they worth seeking out, or did they deserve to be splashed all over the sidewalk like a 3 a.m. Jäger bomb? Read on to find out.
What's in it?
We were sent a package with four shooter bottles of Jägermeister Cold Brew Coffee Herbal Liqueur, a bag of Dark Matter Coffee beans flavored with the aforementioned liqueur, and a chocolate bar made by Dark Matter that was infused with the same liqueur. Per Jägermeister, the coffee liqueur is flavored with a blend of Arabica beans and 56 other botanicals. What those botanicals are exactly, they're not saying.
Dark Matter Coffee is far more forthcoming about the exact ingredients in its coffee beans and chocolate. The beans are a Guatemalan cultivar called Caturra. They're grown at a farm called San Jeronimo Miramar and then infused with Jägermeister Cold Brew. The chocolate is made from a single varietal of cacao beans: Trinitario from Chiapas, Mexico. Much like the coffee, the cacao beans are infused with liqueur before being made into chocolate. Dark Matter notes that this cacao varietal has a fruit-forward flavor with hints of citrus, cherry, and grape.
How much does it cost, and where can I get it?
Although we were sent the liqueur, chocolate, and coffee all in one package, it looks like you can't actually buy all three from the same source. A 750-milliliter bottle of Jägermeister Cold Brew liqueur costs a little over $20 from Total Wine, though the actual price will vary depending on where you're located. There's no indication on Jägermeister's website that this is a limited-time product, so you probably don't have to rush to get it.
The coffee beans and chocolate are both available for purchase directly from Dark Matter Coffee's website. If you buy the coffee on its own, it'll run you $22. The coffee and chocolate bar together cost $30. Both of those prices are before shipping, which is not free. There's no option to buy the chocolate on its own. Although it doesn't say that these products are limited-time-only on Dark Matter's site, since they're a special collaboration, we wouldn't be surprised if they weren't around forever.
How do these compare with other products from Jägermeister and Dark Matter?
Jägermeister Cold Brew is just one of a couple of different varieties of the classic herbal liqueur on the market these days. There's Jägermeister Scharf, a hot and spicy ginger liqueur, and Jägermeister Manifest, an oaky liqueur that the company seems to be trying to sell as an artisanal craft spirit for sipping and savoring. Original Jägermeister is 35% alcohol by volume, while Cold Brew and Scharf are 33% and Manifest is 38%.
Judging from the products available on Dark Matter's site, this is the company's first liquor collaboration. However, it's not the first time that the coffee roaster has teamed up with strange partners. The company also sells coffee co-signed by Charlie Benante, a member of the heavy metal band Anthrax. Another coffee blend was created in collaboration with the Museum of Post-Punk and Industrial Music. It's packaged in a sandpaper bag, so you know it's hardcore. The Jägermeister chocolate bar isn't the brand's first. There are several types of chocolate on its website, including bars as well as pouches of drinking chocolate.
Nutrition
As we've written before, alcohol companies are not required to provide nutritional information to consumers. According to Medline Plus, a 1.5-ounce serving of coffee liqueur contains about 160 calories. We can't know for sure how many calories are in Jägermeister Cold Brew, but it's probably in that ballpark. Regardless of how many calories are in it, excessive consumption of alcohol is associated with a plethora of negative health effects, so it's best to consume any kind of booze in moderation.
Coffee, on the other hand, can be beneficial to your health, at least if you don't drink too much of it. Coffee may help you lose weight and guard against a variety of illnesses. You have probably read about the supposed health benefits of dark chocolate as well, but those claims might be more hype than reality. Big chocolate companies have spent a ton of money on research to try to make their product appear healthy, and it's hard to tell how much of that research is actually valid. That said, it's definitely better for you than booze.
Jägermeister Cold Brew Coffee Herbal Liqueur
The original variety of Jägermeister is a very polarizing liqueur. It's certainly quite popular, selling over 1,400 9-liter cases in the U.S. in 2020 (via Statista). However, it also has a strong flavor that's not for everyone, with notes of anise, cinnamon, and menthol that give it an undeniably medicinal vibe.
The coffee-flavored Jäger adds a new twist on the liqueur's formula, but it's unlikely to win over any staunch Jägermeister haters. Like the original, it has a syrupy, thick texture. The aroma leads with stale coffee with an undertone of cinnamon. The smell is a good indicator of the flavor — it tastes kind of like coffee from yesterday's pot. The most prominent secondary flavor is cinnamon, which gives this liqueur a little bit of a Fireball vibe, though the cinnamon heat is more muted. The coffee flavor covers up most of the other herbal notes you would expect to taste in Jägermeister. The aftertaste lingers in your mouth for longer than is welcome. As the aftertaste develops, it slowly begins to take on more of the herbaceous and spicy flavors of classic Jäger.
Overall, we didn't love this liqueur. It tastes too much like Jäger for people who hate the herbal liqueur's distinctive taste, and the addition of coffee probably won't entice too many Jägermeister fans.
Jägermeister X Dark Matter Coffee Beans
These coffee beans have a strong, spicy Jägermeister aroma, especially after they're ground. We brewed them via both hot and cold methods in the name of science. When brewed hot, the Jäger flavor dissipates. The hot coffee just tastes like a high-quality medium roast blend. It's actually pretty nice coffee. The main evidence of its Jägermeister origins is the smell, which has some notable hints of cinnamon and licorice.
Brewing these cold preserves the Jägermeister essence a lot more. We made the cold brew without a coffee maker, and it was a totally different beverage than the hot coffee. The coffee itself was much more acidic and bitter. It tasted like cold brew you'd pay $7 for at a pretentious coffee shop. This time, the cinnamon and licorice were present in both the taste and the aroma. The cold brew was also definitely high in caffeine. We were buzzing after drinking about 6 ounces of this.
Jägermeister X Dark Matter Coffee Chocolate Bar
This chocolate bar definitely starts with really nice cacao beans. It's 70% cacao, so it's dark but not overwhelmingly so. The bar has a beautiful glossy appearance and pieces break off with the clean, satisfying snap you expect from an expensive artisanal chocolate bar. As you can probably guess, it's the taste where things start to get weird.
This chocolate bar is overwhelmingly sour. We'd be tempted to blame that on the Jäger, but the liqueur itself isn't really sour, so we guess that the cacao beans they're using are especially acidic. The Jägermeister coffee liqueur flavor comes across as truly bizarre in this context. We didn't pick up any coffee while tasting this; cloves and cinnamon dominated our palate instead. The longer the flavor stayed in our mouth, the more strangely savory it became. It reminded us of Chinese food seasoned with five-spice powder. The aftertaste became even more savory and sour, with an umami edge that felt almost salty or garlicky.
The experience of eating this was unquestionably strange, but we found it oddly compelling. Our mouth was confused, and yet we ate the whole thing in just a couple of minutes.