What's the Recipe for Tomato-Infused Coffee? Can Tomato Juice Be Used for Iced Americano?

At FrontStreet Coffee, there's a bean that's deeply loved by many for its unique fruit aroma. Whether served cold or hot, it always presents a refreshing, juicy sweet-tart sensation. This is Kenya's Assalia, whose rich tomato-like aroma is one of its most distinctive characteristics.

The Inspiration Behind Tomato Americano

Recently, FrontStreet Coffee noticed a brand launching a tomato americano coffee. Just hearing the name suggests it's an eccentric product—after all, while many people eat ketchup, very few drink tomato juice. Although FrontStreet Coffee hasn't ordered one to taste, it sparked some inspiration and created an impulse to experiment. Today, FrontStreet Coffee will test this combination for you to see what tomato juice mixed with coffee actually tastes like. Without further ado, let's get started!

Which Tomatoes to Choose?

As a popular fresh produce enjoyed by everyone, we know that tomatoes are both fruits and vegetables.

Large tomatoes belong to the vegetable category—when eaten raw, they're sweet, tart, juicy, refreshing, and delicious. However, if not fully ripe, they can have that raw, vegetal aroma common to garden produce. Cherry tomatoes, on the other hand, have thin, crisp skin and a rich "tomato flavor" when ripe, with higher sugar content, making their sweet-tart profile fuller and their taste better. They can be eaten as fruits, are suitable for juicing, and are also the preferred choice for baristas developing specialty drinks.

There are multiple ways to obtain tomato juice. Thanks to innovations in beverage preparation technology in recent years, we can now order ready-made products from major online shopping platforms. However, FrontStreet Coffee has found that most tomato beverages on the market are sugar-free and have a thick, viscous consistency. When consumed alone, you can taste the natural flavor of the vegetables and fruits, along with a throat-catching acidity. Once paired with coffee, it's like mixing traditional Chinese medicine into thick tomato ketchup. (Don't ask FrontStreet Coffee how we know—those who understand, understand!)

If you have a juicer at home, you might want to experience the joy of DIY. You can also choose your favorite cherry tomato varieties according to your taste. Following the approach used for orange Americanos in the past, FrontStreet Coffee once again purchased cherry tomatoes suitable for direct consumption for juicing.

Getting Started

Considering the need to prepare a 300ml iced coffee, FrontStreet Coffee first used 20 cherry tomatoes directly for juicing. After removing the stems and washing the cherry tomatoes, we cut them in half and put them in the juicer. However, we soon discovered something went wrong. Unlike oranges, because we didn't add water when juicing the cherry tomatoes, the resulting "fruit puree" was almost semi-solid—visually resembling mousse, with no fluidity whatsoever, let alone being suitable for an americano.

Learning from this lesson, FrontStreet Coffee added 120ml of purified water to the fruit pulp during the second attempt.

We used a sieve to filter out the fruit residue and suspended foam, resulting in much clearer cherry tomato juice (for those who prefer a sweeter taste, you can add 10-15g of syrup appropriately).

Now that we had our main ingredient, we just needed to combine them. First, add 90g of ice cubes to a glass, then pour in 120g of freshly squeezed tomato juice. Immediately after, following today's extraction parameters, we ground 19.6g of Nuan Yang coffee powder for 30 seconds to obtain 38g of coffee liquid, which we poured into the tomato juice. Finally, we stirred and tasted.

How Does It Taste?

This cherry tomato iced americano begins with the fresh aroma of cherry tomatoes and coffee, but soon the entire mouth is filled with a heavy acidity, accompanied by coffee's bitterness and the astringent sensation from tomato skins. This reminded FrontStreet Coffee of a sharp comment from a netizen—it's like the sourness of tomatoes and the bitterness of coffee are fighting in your mouth. To sum it up in one word: intense!!!

As the ice gradually melts and the coffee becomes slightly diluted and further cooled, although the bitterness diminishes significantly, you can still taste the astringency from the fruit skins. Overall, this tomato americano can hardly be described as delicious, and those who dislike vegetable juices should be especially cautious when trying it. Indeed, curiosity killed the cat.

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