Customers Love This Trader Joe’s Drink Hack

I always have time for a drink hack – which is good news for me, because we’ve seen plenty of them this year! Whether you’re tweaking and playing with your drinks at home (see the frozen pickle wine hack for an especially bizarre, but weirdly satisfying form of this – if you like pickles, that is), or you’re adapting your Dunkin’ or Sam’s Club café orders, nearly any beverage is ripe for hacking, and nearly any location can host your chosen adaptations. At the core of things, though, and amidst all of this playful chopping and changing, we shouldn’t forget that the point of drink hacks is to make them better. They may seem arbitrary, but they have a purpose…well, most of the time, anyway. 

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Which brings me to a drink hack I spotted this week over on the Trader Joe’s Reddit, which may make one of its more divisive beverages way more palatable. If you’ve got a case of these sitting there collecting dust, it might be for you. 

Trader Joe’s Sparkling Coconut Water And Yuzu + Freezer = Joy

The beverage being hacked here is Trader Joe’s Sparkling Coconut Water and Yuzu, which has proven to be one of the more hit-and-miss items in the grocery store’s drinks repertoire. Some people absolutely love it for its fresh, floral, citrusy, tropical flavor notes; others find it to be way too perfume-forward (one person compared it to sunscreen, which isn’t exactly a glowing endorsement). Basically, it has too much of an unpleasantly overpowering edge for some customers. 

TJ’s fans have figured out, though, that this can be solved with the help of your freezer. If you pop your can of Sparkling Coconut Water and Yuzu in there for around half an hour or so (more or less, depending on the level of freezing you want), it’ll turn into a kind of slushie. When slushified, not only is its perfumed note reduced a little, but it also makes a little more sense in a kind of “oh, this is a bit more of a frozen treat now” kind of way. Simple, but effective.

If In Doubt, Add Alcohol

A little freezer action isn’t the only way to improve this drink, according to the fine people of Reddit. One person said that Trader Joe’s Sparkling Coconut Water and Yuzu is an excellent mixer, and goes especially well with rum – and we see how the liquor would enhance the coconut notes while balancing out its more overt floral tones. Don’t stop there: Add in a splash of pineapple juice and a squeeze of lime, and make a full-on cocktail. Summer is a state of mind.