Award-winning artisan lemonade manufacturer Ohakune from Espoo and award-winning coffee roaster Lehmus Roastery from Lappeenranta have launched a new lemonade for the summer season 2024.
Kahvikola is a refreshing cola-flavored lemonade that gets its soft coffee aroma from Lehmus Roastery's dark roasted quality coffee, produced by a smallholder community in the Espirito Santo region in southeastern Brazil.
The delicious love story between two beverage manufacturers began when Ohakune also started producing cola-flavored soft drinks last year.
"I thought at the time that it would be interesting to test different flavor pairs, because many flavors work well with cola. Coffee was immediately in my mind. Lehmus Roastery had become familiar while we were working at various events, and this spring we agreed to start developing recipes," says Ohakunen's beverage master Matti Kukkonen .
At Lehmus Roastery, the idea of lemonade was accepted immediately, says roastery entrepreneur Arttu Muukkonen .
"Our roasting team and I decided on a dark roasted Brazilian coffee because we thought the freshness of the soft drinks could be balanced by a roast with a thick mouthfeel and cocoa and chocolate aromas."
Ohakune began refining the recipe, and eventually the soft drink brewery produced a more slushy coffee than usual. The extract was combined with the lemonade making process, and the end result is a limited batch of high-quality lemonade. It has less sugar than usual and the coffee aroma is felt, in professional terms, especially in the middle stages of the taste.
Kahvikola will be available for tasting at the Ohakunen and Lehmus Roastery stands at the Helsinki Coffee Festival this coming weekend.
Batches of lemonade will be available in selected supermarkets and the Satamatie 6 café in Lappeenranta during the spring.
Ohakune is a soft drink brewery founded in 2020, focusing on quality ingredients and authentic flavors. Lehmus Roastery is a roastery founded in 2016, focusing on lesompa coffee.