Kotas Reviews So Delicious Dairy Free Nog Coconut Milk

Welcome to Day 5 of Eggnog Week! One type of product that has always kind of weirded me out is the faux-dairy product. I know a lot of people can't drink milk and such, but soy milk, coconut milk, almond milk, and a whole host of other milks that come from "not cows" to readily seem like they are trying much too hard to be "milk" and not "milk substitute". A black bean burger can be delicious, but if it tries to be too much like a meat burger instead of its own thing, it ends up being a crushing disappointment. With all that in mind, let's look at today's subject.

Hang on folks. It's gonna be a bumpy ride.

So Delicious Dairy Free makes a wide variety of coconut and almond milk products that I'm sure you've seen in your local green grocers. This is one of their "holiday" flavors, along with Mint Chocolate and (sigh) Pumpkin Spice. I am not a huge fan of coconut flavor in general, but I do occasionally indulge in an Almond Joy or Samoa here and there. This particular incarnation claims to be "Nog" flavored. This is actually a ready concession to the fact that artificial eggnog tastes a lot like...well, nog, whatever that magical substance may be. But how well will it pair with coconut milk? 

Dun, dun, DUUUUUUUUUUN.

Well, it looks a lot like eggnog to me. Smells faintly of coconut and noggishness, but how bad could it really be? Well, I'll tell you, it can be pretty freakin' terrible. This is drinking coconut milk laced with something almost but not quite entirely unlike eggnog. If you've ever entered a room where all the furniture was moved 1 inch to the left but you didn't know about it, that vague and growing sense of "wrongness" is exactly what I am talking about. It's pretty thin in consistency, but it really doesn't taste like eggnog or even just nog. It tastes like you'd expect vertigo to taste like. Off putting and strange, but not undrinkable I suppose. Coconut milk lovers will be much more inclined to like this, but the weird "faux-faux-nog" flavor is still unsettling.

Because of Science, I threw some rum into this because really, that could only improve the flavor, right? The pina colada is a classic for a reason, right? WRONG. The flavor of the coconut milk, coupled with their version of "nog" completely cancels out the rum flavoring leaving you with a glass of creamy alcoholic nothing. Seriously, it has no flavor at all other than the vagueish hint at generic sweetness. This was even MORE off putting and strange than the stuff by itself! Also, adding booze made it even more awful. How is that even a thing? 

On the FACE Rating System, this gets a well deserved 2 frowny faces. It is drinkable, but it is something I would want to do as fast as possible so I could move on to actual good drinks. If you like coconut milk you might be more inclined to enjoy this, but their particular spin on "nog" is just wrong enough compared to normal nog as to push me off my game. If you've never had eggnog before and like coconut milk, you might like this, but everyone else? No. Just, no.