We Taste-Tested 9 Supermarket Coffee Ice Creams—Here Are Our Favorites

It’s not too late to turn back. You can make the decision right now to move your life forward, unburdened by…what lies in front of you. Because what lies in front of you is a lot of very charged words about coffee ice cream, a thing you presumably love and have strong feelings about. 

…We do too! That’s why we wanted to warn you upfront.

Alas, recently, the Serious Eats team pulled together nine brands of coffee ice cream you’re likely to find in your local supermarket and methodically, empirically, scientifically! tasted its way through them all in a quest to identify the very best. And we…well, we loved the idea of every minute of doing it! The reality was another story.

The Contenders

• Adirondack High Peak Perk Coffee Bean
• Ben & Jerry’s Coffee Toffee
• Breyers Coffee Ice Cream
• Del’s Dairy Farm & Ice Cream Co. Coffee Toffee
• Friendly’s Coffee Ice Cream
• Häagen-Dazs Coffee Ice Cream
• McConnell’s Coffee Ice Cream
• Turkey Hill Colombian Coffee Ice Cream
• Wegman’s Premium Coffee Ice Cream

The Criteria

A good coffee ice cream should eat like you’re drinking a cup of coffee. It, under no circumstances, should eat like you’re eating a cup of coffee. It should be easy! Pleasant! Delicious! If you are sitting there going: “Why on earth would she feel the need to say such a thing?” please consider yourself blessed to have never happened upon a ground-, bean-, and/or coffee-related chunk-filled scoop. This was the clearest common denominator amongst our winners—there! was! nothing! in! them! Anything with even a fleck in it—regardless of the ice cream’s hue—landed in the bottom half of our rankings. In fact, this distinction was so clear that the numerical rankings ran the whooole gamut of the scale, which almost never happens. I normally sit here and say things like “haha we all just love peanut butter no matter what, I guess!” No! Our love of coffee ice cream is deeply, deeply conditional and that condition is “no nonsense in the ice cream!!”

Anyway! That same ice cream should taste more like coffee than it does like milk, but that milky creaminess must be present. If there are other flavors present, they should be vanilla or caramel, but none of those flavors should in any way interfere with the coffee of it all. 

God, I’m wound up! Almost like I’ve been consuming a lot of coffee!! A perfect time to introduce the ratings.

The Rankings

Häagen-Dazs Coffee Ice Cream, 4/5

It doesn’t bring me joy to be A Person Who References The Office at work, but you know that episode where the whole cohort is tallying how many ways Phyllis can describe the way a perfect rainy day makes her feel? Each and every tester ate this sample and proceeded to write something gorgeously cheesy about how content this ice cream made them feel. I will pick on Genevieve specifically for this blurb, because her tasting notes best help me make my point here while still discussing the ice cream productively: “Love the creamy texture, really smooth! This is the only one so far that I have finished the entire sample of. Is this Häagen-Dazs? It’s got such a nice color. I feel like I’m sitting down to enjoy a cup of coffee on a windowsill with a good book. It’s making me feel so many things!”

Friendly’s Coffee Ice Cream, 3.56/5

A decidedly milkier experience than a coffee-ier one, this option ate smoothly and was the color of “cafe con leche with a little too much leche,” Kelli wrote. It was exactly the consistency of ice cream you’d hope would be the base of your diner milkshake or paired with an Irish coffee. I’ve also lost count at this point of how many taste tests we’ve conducted in which a “premium” brand lands first place and an unserious brand (said with affection!) of yore falls decidedly in second; I am out of jokes about how the Serious Eats team needs to pop some magnesium and listen to a Celine Dion album while sitting on the floor. 

Wegman’s Coffee Ice Cream, 3.33/5

Another bronze medal for Wegman’s! Comments on this store brand always, without exception, remark on beautiful bounce and chew. Genevieve wrote that it was “really smooth and creamy; slightly stretchy, but not unpleasantly slow!” This was also the boldest, deepest color of the bunch. Dark roast-y! As for the actual flavor, all notes pointed toward a heavier coffee presence, some even going so far as to remark on a coffee syrup/extract flavor.

Turkey Hill Coffee Ice Cream, 3.25/5

Well, I never! In the past few tests, Turkey Hill has performed decidedly poorly—these editors have exclusively found it to be too foamy, too mildly flavored, and just not satisfying. In coffee world, though, that subtlety was a positive. Kelli even went so far as to say this ice cream was “probably the only one I’d eat again,” calling the underlying sweetness “wonderful” with caramel undertones. To be fair, Kelli had never had coffee ice cream before, and all other testers that day found this to be a milder coffee offering.

Ben & Jerry’s Coffee Toffee, 3.25/5

In Ben & Jerry’s defense, we searched high and low for Coffee Coffee Buzz Buzz and were only met with this option at three different grocery stores in the vicinity. That said, everyone always enjoys the heft and fresh dairy energy brought forth by a scoop of B&J’s. “The random bits and bobs” of toffee woven throughout this option were “a bit unexpected but not unpleasant,” Amanda thought. It made the whole experience sweeter than testers were hoping for, though, and firmly planted it into “not what [we] think of when [we] think of ‘coffee ice cream’” territory.

Del’s Dairy Farm & Ice Cream Co. Coffee Toffee, 2.9/5

Same notes here as with the Ben & Jerry’s ones right above this, just with more mentions of caramel frapps and imminent toothaches. Smooth! Nicely melty! Really creamy! Just achingly sweet.

Breyers Coffee Ice Cream, 2.5/5

The palest, latte-like color of the batch, which in turn translated to the least present coffee flavor of all. In fact, after some bites, it wasn’t terribly clear that this was a coffee ice cream? It was, like, vague coffee ice cream? Kelli, who at this point decided she does not really like coffee ice cream, wrote: “If you told me this was off-brand amaretto, I would believe you.” That said, it was plenty frothy! And that’s a part of coffee, so!

Adirondack High Peak Perk Coffee Bean, 1.33/5

OK so, they really heard “coffee” and went “find me all the coffee you can. No no, don’t do anything to it, just get it into the ice cream. No!! I don’t care if it looks like that!! Just put all the coffee in the ice cream.” So, listen. If you want some sandy, almost-certainly caffeinated coffee ice cream, this is for you. It was not for our editors, who wrote things like “If I wanted to eat my coffee machine, I would” and “IT LITERALLY IS LIKE A MOUTHFUL OF COFFEE GROUNDS.”

McConnell’s Coffee Ice Cream, 1.25/5

Same thing as Adirondack, but with even more coffee. In fact, legend goes that the Serious Eats editorial team still hasn’t slept or known peace to this day.

Our Testing Methodology

All taste tests are conducted with brands completely hidden and without discussion. Tasters taste samples in random order. For example, taster A may taste sample 1 first, while taster B will taste sample 6 first. This is to prevent palate fatigue from unfairly giving any one sample an advantage. Tasters are asked to fill out tasting sheets ranking the samples for various criteria. All data is tabulated and results are calculated with no editorial input in order to give us the most impartial representation of actual results possible.