I Nitro Infused a Coffee and It Tasted Like Craft Beer

There are moments in coffee where something unexpected happens and you just stop. Not because anything went wrong, but because what ended up in the glass was genuinely surprising. This was one of those moments.

What Is Nitro Infused Coffee?

If you haven't come across nitro coffee before, the short version is this: it's coffee that has been infused with nitrogen gas. The nitrogen creates tiny, fine bubbles that give the coffee a dense, creamy texture, similar to the mouthfeel you get from a nitro stout beer on tap. The result is coffee that is smooth, slightly sweet in perception and noticeably thicker than regular brewed coffee.

Traditionally, nitro coffee is made using cold brew as the base. Cold brew is easy to work with for this purpose because it's already chilled, it's low in acidity and the flavour profile tends to be mellow and round. The nitrogen complements that nicely. But cold brew has its limitations. The extended, room-temperature extraction process tends to mute acidity and reduce some of the complexity you get from hot brewing.

Why I Prefer Brewing Hot over Cold Brew

This is where I started doing things a little differently. Rather than cold-brewing the coffee, I brew it hot using a pour over and then chill it down before nitro-infusing.

Hot water extracts differently to cold. You get more acidity, more brightness and a greater range of flavour compounds pulling through into the cup. For certain coffees, particularly those with citrus or floral characteristics, that makes a real difference. Cold brew versions of these coffees can taste flat by comparison. Hot-then-chilled keeps that brightness alive while still giving you a cold base ready for infusion.

I've been experimenting with this process using the N2Dup Nitro Coffee Infuser, which uses N2 canisters to infuse nitrogen directly into the coffee. It's a straightforward piece of kit: brew, chill, charge, shake, serve. The infusion process takes seconds and the result is immediate.

The Coffee That Turned This Into Craft Beer

The coffee I used for this particular brew was a Colombian Pink Bourbon from Offshoot Coffee, processed using carbonic maceration. That combination alone hints at something unusual.

Pink Bourbon is a rare coffee varietal that produces a noticeably sweet and fruit-forward cup. Carbonic maceration is a processing method borrowed from the wine world, where coffee cherries are fermented in a sealed, oxygen-free environment filled with carbon dioxide. The result is typically a wine-like, intensely fruity flavour profile that sits somewhere between a natural processed coffee and something far more experimental. Roasters often use it to draw out unusual, striking tasting notes.

The Offshoots roast delivered on that. Their tasting notes described the coffee as having a 'Preserved Lemon' quality, and brewed as a pour over, that was accurate. There was a distinct sweet citrus character with a kind of savoury brightness that sits somewhere between lemon zest and lemon curd. It's not a flavour you encounter often in coffee and it's what made this particular experiment so interesting.

What Happened When I Nitro-Infused It

After brewing, I chilled the coffee for six hours in the fridge before charging it with the N2Dup. Standard shake, then serve immediately.

What came out of the dispenser tasted like craft beer.

It wasn't just the texture triggering a beer association. The nitro infusion had done something to that preserved lemon character that pushed it firmly into hop territory. There was a sweet, citrus-forward base, then a tangy, almost bitter finish that you would recognise instantly if you've ever drunk a hazy IPA or a fruity pale ale. The creaminess from the nitrogen was still present, that smooth latte-foam-like texture that nitro coffee is known for, but the flavour underneath was doing something genuinely unexpected.

It still tasted like coffee. It held its structure. But the combination of the carbonic maceration processing, Pink Bourbon varietals character and hot-brew extraction had produced something that, once nitro-infused, sat right on the line between specialty coffee and craft beer. Think if Guinness had coffee in it!

Nitro Flash Brew Recipe:

For anyone looking to recreate this coffee, I've attached a recipe I used to make this coffee. Noted the coffee we used is a seasonal single origin and isn't available anymore so I highly recommend looking for a light roast coffee with lemon, lemongrass or other high acidic lemony tasting notes listed. Especially if you're looking to recreate that craft beer taste!

• Coffee: 15g
• Water: 250g at 95°C
• Brewer: Hario V60 NEO Dripper
• Brew time: Around 3 minutes 30 seconds
• Chill: 3-6 hours in the fridge
• Infuse: Nitro-flush using N2Dup, shake well, serve immediately

The brew ratio here is fairly standard for a V60 pour over. If you want to use this as a concentrate to dilute slightly before infusing, you could tighten the ratio, but for drinking straight this worked well.

Using the N2Dup Nitro

We used the N2Dup Nitro coffee maker, it is similar to a normal whipped cream charge dispenser with a specific nozzle that attaches to the body. We were gifted this unit to test and had an overall good experience using it! The N2Dup makes creamy nitros coffee using Nitrogen canisters specifically, this isn't compatible with N20 canisters (more common and used for whipped cream).

Nitro Coffee as a Gateway to Black Coffee

One thing I keep coming back to with nitro coffee is how accessible it makes black coffee for people who don't usually drink it. The nitrogen creates a creamy, smooth texture that feels familiar, like a latte-style mouthfeel, without any milk involved. For someone who usually finds black coffee too sharp or too thin, nitro coffee offers a completely different experience.

That makes it genuinely interesting from a cafe perspective. Nitro-flushed coffee could sit on a menu as a bridge option, something for customers who want to try drinking black coffee without it feeling like a step down in texture. The flavour complexity is still there. The quality of the bean still comes through. But the mouthfeel removes one of the most common barriers.

The fact that you can also use it to highlight unusual coffees like this Colombian makes it even more compelling. Some coffees have characteristics that are almost better suited to this format than a standard hot brew.