The Spiked Vietnamese Coffee That's Almost Four Loko-Level Boozy

Canned cocktails are the drinks industry's latest obsession and it's given beverage companies a lot of room for creativity. Even Vietnamese iced coffee has now been spiked. Yoju, a beverage brand known for its canned yogurt-soju cocktails, recently released a canned Vietnamese iced coffee, leading to commentary on social media comparing it to the infamous highly caffeinated Four Loko. 

Yoju's ready-to-drink cocktails use soju, the Korean spirit distilled from rice, sweet potatoes, or tapioca that is often compared flavor-wise as a smoother, sweeter version of vodka. Yoju's usual lineup of pre-made canned cocktails combines soju, yogurt, and fruit, but the brand recently created a limited-time release of the world's first hard Vietnamese coffee.

Yoju's hard Vietnamese coffee combines real coffee from Vietnam, creamy sweetened condensed milk, and soju to make what Yoju describes on its website as "an incredibly delicious Asian twist on an espresso martini." The drink comes in an 8-pack of 250 milliliter cans has an ABV of 7% and about 25-30 milligrams of caffeine (a fraction of the caffeine in normal Vietnamese coffee). Available at select Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, and Costcos, as well as other specialty stores, in Maryland, Washington D.C., Virginia, Hawaii, Washington, and California, the canned coffee cocktail has created a stir on social.

Reactions to Yoju's hard coffee range from people curious to try it to others saying it's a recipe for disaster. "For those moments when you feel like testing the limits of your cardiovascular system. What could go wrong?" asked one Redditor. On another forum, a commenter wrote,"These are delicious!! I had at a friend's house and immediately bought two packs on my next TJ's trip!" Other commenters compared the drink to Four Loko, with one user dubbing it "Pho Loko."

Four Loko, created in the early 2000s, combined the caffeine of a cup-and-a-half of coffee, and the alcohol of four beers. With Four Loko flavors ranging from grape to watermelon, it was a vastly different drink than the coffee-forward Yoju. Four Loko went viral for inducing blackouts, spurring Reddit threads recounting people's wildest experiences after drinking it.

After people were hospitalized after drinking Four Loko, legislation was passed in 2010 requiring makers of alcohol-energy drinks to remove caffeine from its beverages. So, how is Yoju's drink legal? The law restricts caffeine as an additive rather than caffeine present naturally in the brewing process like Yoju's hard Vietnamese coffee has. There's no comparing Yoju's drink with Four Loko: With alcohol-energy drinks, it's the quantity of caffeine and alcohol that's dangerous, not that it combines the two. Each can of Yoju's hard coffee contains a fraction of the 156 milligrams of caffeine found in the original 23.5 ounce can of Four Loko. As the Greek philosopher Epicurus famously said, "Be moderate in order to taste the joys of life in abundance."