Peet's Coffee Summer Drink Menu Review: Five Strange Sips, Some Good, Some Not As Much

When Peet's Coffee sold for a surprising amount of money in 2012 — almost $1 billion in total — it was testament to the fact the Berkeley, California business had grown to a degree unprecedented by few coffee shops not called Starbucks. That said, Peet's isn't ubiquitous like Starbucks, but centralized in a few urban areas. Namely, the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Portland, Chicago, and Washington D.C. are the brand's hubs, with a handful of other major cities hosting a location or a few.

Residents of a city with a Peet's know that its menu typically includes a robust lineup of creative seasonal drinks. For the Summer 2025, Peet's debuted a menu headlined by two sparkling peach drinks and three coffee-based mocktails. In total, these include the Sparkling Peach Matcha, Sparkling Peach Chill Brew, Baridi Mule, Peet's on the Beach, and Hula Brew. I picked up all five of these drinks myself to see how they tasted and if they're worth seeking out. The following includes a quick rundown of the Peet's 2025 Summer Menu's logistics as well as my individual thoughts on each drink I tried.

All five new Peet's Summer Menu drinks were only available at my location in a Medium size for $5.95. Prices at other locations vary, though the highest I found — in Los Angeles and San Francisco — wasn't too much more at $6.15. Many locations also offer a seasonal Croissant Grilled Cheese, typically for $6.25, though my location — as well as a selection of others I checked online — lacked this item. Also included among the chain's seasonal offerings are a medium roast bag of coffee, called Off the Grid, and a light roast called Sun Catcher. Each goes for $19.95.

It's worth noting that the press release for the Peet's Summer 2025 Menu also lists a Bacon Cheddar Brioche and a Cold Brew with Cream Top drink. My location did not carry these, nor did I see them listed online at other locations I checked. Nevertheless, they may well pop up at some Peet's stores over the summer too.

The Peet's Summer Menu debuted on June 4, and will stick around for a limited time. Since its Spring Menu lasted from March until the Summer Menu's June debut, it should be possible to pick up these new items until the chain's first Fall promotion, which is likely to start in late August based on last year's timeline.

Of the two sparkling peach beverages on the Peet's 2025 Summer Menu, the Sparkling Peach Matcha is quite a bit busier. Not only does it consist of matcha — produced by Mighty Leaf, a tea company owned by Peet's — peach juice, and club soda, but complicating the recipe is a splash of the Summer's seasonal Off the Grid coffee.

While the combination of matcha and coffee sounds intriguing, I wouldn't have known my drink included any coffee had I not read its ingredients list. In my first couple of sips, matcha dominated everything, and that was to the drink's detriment. The Mighty Leaf matcha just isn't that great, veering closer to the flavor of a wheatgrass shot than green tea, from which matcha is technically different. That said, once I mixed up my drink sufficiently, the sparkling peach flavor dulled the unpleasant matcha somewhat, resulting in a relatively enjoyable flavor. It's not something I would go out of my way to order, but it adequately pulled off a uniquely specific blend of effervescent tea and sweet peach flavor.

Comprising the Sparkling Peach Chill Brew is the exact blend of ingredients its name suggests: cold-brewed Off the Grid medium-roast coffee, peach juice, and club soda. Enjoyment of this drink pretty much hinges on whether or not a sparkling peach coffee sounds appealing to you. 

The first sip of my Sparkling Peach Chill Brew was dominated by coffee. In fact, every single one of my Summer Menu drinks required quite a bit of stirring and shaking before I felt like its ingredients were adequately blended. In this particular drink, adequate blending just meant I could perceive the addition of the sparkling peach flavor in the coffee. Altogether, it was still relatively subtle but intriguing, since peach coffee is pretty far out of the realm of most coffee shop's everyday offerings — though Starbucks will make a secret peach drink if you know what to ask for. Personally, I would prefer an unflavored cold brew, but connoisseurs of coffee with effervescence or peach flavor very well might find this an upgrade.

The Baridi Mule is one of three mocktails on the Peet's Summer Menu. Baridi, for what it's worth, refers to the name of a Peet's coffee blended specially for cold brew. Altogether, the Baridi Mule contains cold-brewed Baridi coffee, Owen's brand ginger beer, and a Franken-flavoring that Peet's simply describes as mint-lime.

Key to the success of the Peet's Baridi Mule is the Owen's ginger beer. It's flavorful without veering into excessive sharpness or spice, making room for its complementary ingredients to shine. The foremost contribution of the coffee component is a nice roasted-ness, uncomplicated by a merely subtle bitterness. Just like in a classic Moscow mule recipe, the mint-lime enhances these ingredients, adding a refreshing quality. For offering a uniquely compelling flavor experience that I don't think it's possible to find anywhere else, this was the sole drink I tried from the Peet's Summer Menu that I would order again.

A typical recipe for a refreshing sex on the beach cocktail basically just revolves around a mix of fruit flavors and alcohol. The obviously alcohol-free Peet's on the Beach is a mix of Mighty Leaf brand black tea, pineapple juice, and peach flavor.

Ideally, this drink would taste like flavored tea, but pineapple dominates everything. And unfortunately, I found the Peet's pineapple juice sort of actively off-putting. It's identifiably sharp and almost citrus-y like pineapple should be, but those elements are accompanied by a flavor I can only really describe as artificial. Before I even realized I was drinking pineapple juice, my gut reaction to this drink was distaste for that artificiality. It's possible my palate is uniquely sensitive to something in the pineapple juice Peet's uses, though I've had plenty of other pineapple juices I've enjoyed so I know it's not a universal thing. Whatever the case may be, having found the pineapple juice off-putting and the drink pretty much absent of black tea or peach flavors, I decisively did not enjoy my Peet's on the Beach.

In the Peet's Hula Brew is Baridi cold brew, orgeat syrup, and pineapple juice. Orgeat syrup is an almond-flavored ingredient common in Tiki cocktails, hence this drink's tropical name. The pineapple juice in the Hula Brew meant that I found this drink suffered from the same big issue as my Peet's On the Beach, but I did think it was the superior of the two.

The degree to which I was able to sort of enjoy my Hula Brew was thanks entirely to the orgeat syrup. It was prominent enough that its almond flavor helped distract from the pineapple juice I disliked. Peet's describes the coffee in the Hula Brew as something with which the sweet components are topped, and accordingly, I couldn't taste much of a coffee flavor. Altogether, a caffeinated, almond-y, pineapple drink isn't the worst idea, and it might work with higher-quality pineapple juice. Lacking that final hypothetical ingredient, however, the Hula Brew is an unfortunate miss.

A representative for Peet's Coffee reached out to Mashed about reviewing its summer menu and provided me with a gift card to order each of these items. However, all opinions are entirely my own, and my local Peet's store had no indication that the drinks I purchased with that gift card were for the sake of a review and not just personal enjoyment.

I picked up all five drinks in one trip to my nearest Peet's in Las Vegas, Nevada. I tried them all as soon as I brought them home. Initially, I drank about a quarter of each drink and took the majority of my notes on what I thought of them afterword. Then, I periodically came back to each drink a few more times to help solidify my opinions. Altogether, I drank about half of each drink in the span of a couple hours before finalizing my individual reviews.