Starbucks Is Where Hipster Food Trends Go to Die

The world’s biggest coffee chain apparently wants to be a craft cocktail bar when it grows up. No, Starbucks baristas thankfully haven’t adopted a uniform of fedoras and bowties (though that’s certainly an option) — but they’re now slinging barrel-aged coffee beans and drinks in mason jars.

This week, Starbucks unveiled its first barrel-aged coffee at its fancy Roastery location in Seattle. Green (unroasted) beans from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi are left to age for several weeks in oak barrels that previously contained whiskey, meaning the beans absorb the flavor of the spirit — though any actual alcohol content is burned off in the subsequent roasting process. Customers can buy the beans whole or sample the coffee in a cold-brew beverage that comes in a rocks glass and looks suspiciously like a fancy cocktail.

Meanwhile, in Singapore, Mashable reports Starbucks is serving its cold brew in mason jars, the favorite vessel of Pinterest junkies and hipster archetypes everywhere. The jars themselves are available for purchase, but clearly no self-respecting Schwinn bicycle-riding, handlebar mustache-having coffee drinker would be caught dead sipping out of a mason jar emblazoned with a Starbucks logo.

Clearly Starbucks got the memo on things millennials want — or, at least, things corporations believe millennials want. From here, it seems the only thing left to conquer is avocado toast.

• Hipsters, Toss Your Mason Jars Because Starbucks Now Carries Them [Mashable]
• Starbucks First Barrel-Aged Coffee Debuts at Seattle Roastery [Starbucks Newsroom]
• More Starbucks Coverage [E]