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It may be cold outside, but it's always iced coffee season. To celebrate, we decided to taste test and rank all of Dunkin's iced coffee swirl flavors —from traditional mocha to seasonal pumpkin. We judged them on overall taste, but also if the coffee actually tasted like the flavor it was purporting to be.
If you look at a Dunkin' menu, you'll notice two different ways to flavor your coffee—a shot or a swirl. According to the company, the flavor shots are unsweetened and sugar-free, while the swirls are creamier, made with sweetened condensed milk and other flavors.
But do these flavor swirls combine with coffee to create a true flavor bomb of deliciousness? Read on for our favorites.
1. Caramel Mocha
Combine two standards, and what do you get? Iced coffee with a flavor that delivers. Our tasters said they tasted more chocolate than caramel, but overall the effect was quite pleasant. The caramel leans on the sweet side and is well balanced with the intense mocha flavors. When ordering, get two shots of each for a large iced coffee (the only size you should be ordering, in our opinion).
2. Mocha
Another classic, and with good reason — this had an intense chocolate flavor. One taster remarked that it was like hot chocolate with coffee, which sounds exactly like a mocha should be. It's like the beer stout of coffee. There's also not a ton of sweetness, just bitter notes.
3. Caramel
The rich flavor on this is pretty spot on. It does have a lot of sweetness to it, though, so if you like your coffee to still taste like coffee, stay away from this one. If you are unashamed and like a coffee that tastes like dessert, caramel is for you.
4. Toasted White Chocolate
This one was good, but not great. The toasty part came through in a sort of nutty flavor, which was nice, but we were disappointed by the lack of white chocolate potency. It's definitely more on the subtle side.
5. Pumpkin
This one shocked us. You think you know what a pumpkin coffee tastes like, especially with it being so trendy this time of year. But one sip of this drink, and all we tasted was cinnamon. Like, a lot of cinnamon. At first, we wondered if the flavors were mixed up, but at the moment, Dunkin' doesn't have a straight cinnamon offering. So if the flavor of warm spices is all you want in your iced coffee, opt for the pumpkin.
6. French Vanilla
More like fake vanilla — hey oh! The vanilla flavors were kinda weak, but the testers overwhelmingly found this drink to taste fake-y and artificial. French vanilla iced coffee loses points for that ickiness, but also for being super boring.
7. Hazelnut
We don't know what this drink tasted like, but it definitely wasn't hazelnut. All but one taster felt like this overly strong flavor seemed like something different, from "a buttered popcorn jelly bean" to "perfume." One taster even visibly shuddered, saying, "I'm freaked out by that one."
So there you have it! Dunkin' offers a wide array ice coffees, from ones that intensify the coffee flavors, to others that completely mask them. We hope our (extremely grueling) testing experience will help you figure out which iced coffee to order next time.
