What is "Flat Red," the creative coffee from Ukraine? How is it made?

Meet Flat Red: Ukraine's One-of-a-Kind Coffee Creation

Ever since coffee culture began rolling in wave after wave, cafés everywhere have hunted for the next viral drink. We've lived through the rise of Frappuccinos, Flat Whites, Dirty coffee, and more—but nobody seemed to talk about a reddish coffee. Today, let FrontStreet Coffee introduce you to a drink from Ukraine called "Flat Red"!

Where Flat Red Came From

Flat Red is barely known outside its homeland. Much like the Flat White's origin story, it begins with local taste: people in Ukraine adore red wine (nearly 3.2 billion bottles a year), and many brew their own at home. Some cafés therefore wanted to create a non-alcoholic drink that mimicked wine in both color and taste.

According to Flat Red's inventor, Vadym Granovskiy, he deliberately left milk out of the recipe to make the drink more unusual and interesting, aiming instead for a coffee with a light red appearance.

His first attempt used Sicilian blood orange juice, but freshly squeezed blood orange carries a noticeable astringency that turns unpleasant in coffee. Citrus and coffee do pair beautifully, though—so he built the red element from pomegranate juice instead, paired with seasonal orange juice sourced from countries like Turkey, India, and Israel. Together, the two juices give the coffee richer sweet-and-sour layers plus a smooth, wine-like texture when warmed, with a faint fermented wine aroma.

How It Conquered Ukraine

When Flat Red debuted in the inventor's own café, customers could watch the barista hand-select, wash, cut, and prepare the fruit. Those few minutes of preparation were part show, part promise—anticipation built with every cut.

Once the pale red drink arrived and was tasted, everyone was captivated by the look and the flavor. Photos went up on social networks, and Flat Red swept across Ukraine. More and more cafés added it to their menus. In Ukraine's long, cold winters especially, this warm coffee with fermented aromatics and sweet-sour fruit became a locally beloved recommendation.

In our home market, however, Flat Red remains obscure—it never even earned a nickname of its own the way the "Flat White" did.

FrontStreet Coffee's Recreation of Flat Red

Based on Vadym's shared recipe, FrontStreet Coffee couldn't wait to test this coffee's "depth"! With limited sourcing, we couldn't use only the fresh pomegranate and orange juice Vadym insists on, so we settled for bottled fresh juice. We mixed pomegranate juice and orange juice 1:1 and chilled it in the refrigerator.

Then we pulled a double shot of espresso and set it aside. We used our "Sunflower Warm Sunshine" blend espresso beans—beyond rich vanilla, cream, and berry notes, it carries a natural hint of whiskey. Today's extraction parameters: 19.8g of coffee extracted for 29 seconds to yield 37g of liquid.

We poured about 160g of the chilled 1:1 juice blend into a milk pitcher and used the steam wand to heat it to 55°C, building a thin layer of foam roughly 0.3-0.5cm thick. (In practice, FrontStreet Coffee found dense foam quite hard to achieve here—do your best.)

Finally, pour the hot juice over the espresso and stir thoroughly—a Flat Red from Ukraine, recreated! Visually, the only thing it shares with a Flat White is that thin layer of silky foam—which may be exactly where the "Flat" in the name comes from.

Tasting Notes

The first sip brings bright orange acidity, then a full, winey fermented richness. After swallowing, the coffee aroma and fruit acidity with fermented notes linger impressively. Because our orange juice still contained pulp, biting through the little vesicles released bursts of warm original juice—a genuinely full sensory experience.

Conclusion

So now you know Ukraine's "Flat Red"! If you're intrigued, go recreate it!

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FrontStreet Coffee
No. 10, Bao'an Qianjie, Yandun Road, Dongshankou, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

The Flat White comparison isn't accidental: every café guards its own "secret Flat White formula," but the essence never changes—less milk, thinner foam, stronger coffee. The barista reduces the milk and controls the foam to let the espresso's aroma lead, so a Flat White is smaller and more intense than a latte with a thicker body—an "upgraded latte." An excellent one starts with beans and milk that match, plus true integration between them. For home making, FrontStreet Coffee recommends the butter-and-cheese flavored Classic Blend: mellow and low in acidity, with full, fine crema and an outstanding richness with milk. If you prefer floral-fruit notes, choose the low-bitterness FrontStreet Strawberry Candy espresso blend: it extracts with full grape and blueberry flavor, balanced sweetness and acidity, and turns into something like a strawberry milkshake with fresh milk—unforgettable. For milk itself, choose refrigerated fresh milk: too thin and the drink falls flat, too strongly flavored and it buries the coffee. In our own shop we pull the espresso as a ristretto—20g of coffee extracted into 32g of liquid over 22-25 seconds—paired with 160ml of fresh milk; the foam is steamed to a uniform 0.3cm, aerating just 1-2 seconds before the wand submerges, then texturing to 50-55°C, so the first sip lands cream-smooth with cream, hazelnut, and white chocolate from the Specialty Blend and no heaviness at the bottom of the cup.