Wake up and smell the coffee milk. Modesto dairy offers cold-brew with a twist

Your milk mustache is about to get caffeinated.

A Modesto dairy has joined the cold-brewed coffee craze with a milky twist. Nutcher Milk Co. has been bottling and selling its product in a variety of flavors since 2015. This summer the company launched its latest with an eye on the booming coffee market.

Nutcher brought its new Cold Brew Coffee Milk and Mocha Milk to store shelves in early June. Made by cold-steeping coffee grounds, cold brew has been embraced by national behemoths like Starbucks as well as Bay Area-based favorites like Peet’s Coffee.

Nutcher Milk owner Rick Nutcher, who doesn’t drink coffee, said his daughter and son-in-law convinced him to make a coffee milk. The company worked on the recipe for about six months. The final product is a mix of cappuccino concentrate and fresh milk. The resulting taste is very much like an iced coffee with cream. The mocha flavor mixes the coffee with chocolate milk to satisfy chocoholics.

“What makes us different from other (cold-brew coffee) is that we’re made with whole milk and so are also full of protein and calcium,” Nutcher said.

Nutcher’s coffee milk also packs a caffeinated punch. Each 8-ounce glass has about 85 grams of caffeine, roughly equivalent to the amount in a regular cup of coffee.

“A lot of people think we just add coffee flavor, they don’t think it’s real coffee. But then when they hear there’s caffeine in it they get really excited about it,” he said.

Since it began bottling its own milk for the public, Nutcher has experimented with fun flavors. In addition to staples like its whole, 2-percent and chocolate milks, the company pumps out root beer, strawberry, orange cream and cotton candy flavors year-round. Seasonal flavors like pumpkin spice and eggnog have also proven popular.

Nutcher Milk’s coffee milk is available at Save Mart and O’Brien’s grocery stores in the region as well as various markets in the foothills. Nutcher Milk is the only regional dairy producing cold brew coffee milk right now. The closest California competitor making its own coffee milk is Tulare’s Rosa Brothers Milk Company.

Nutcher said he sees coffee milk as opportunity to get more people trying milk. It samples the flavor, along with all its other offerings, at the Turlock Certified Farmers Market each Saturday. The public is also invited to come to the dairy on Grayson Road for free tastings during the week.

“I’m a dairyman and I want more people drinking milk,” Nutcher said. “I want to make milk fun.”

This story was originally published July 19, 2017 at 3:17 PM.