Meet Coffee Milk: The Official Drink of Rhode Island

If you've never been to New England or met someone from Rhode Island, you may have never heard of coffee milk until recently. As coffee continues its popularity streak, coffee milk, a northeastern favorite, has emerged as a regional drink worth trying—it's also a key ingredient in Dunkin's newest beverage, the Dunkalatte .

So, What's Coffee Milk? In Rhode Island, coffee milk isn't simply a mishmash of beverages—it's something intentional and entirely different, and to some, it's a way of life.

Coffee milk is whole milk combined with a coffee-flavored syrup or extract, akin to chocolate or strawberry milk. It's creamy with a subtle coffee flavor, almost like a milkshake.

"It does have a sweetener in it, and there are different kinds that have popped up over the years,"says Ellen Puccetti, chief executive officer at Wright's Dairy Farm & Bakery in North Smithfield, Rhode Island. In a state where coffee milk is ubiquitous, Wright's is a well-known purveyor and uses Autocrat Coffee Syrup (RI's gold standard). Puccetti says that Autocrat, a local coffee roaster, started making the syrup, which eventually found itself paired with milk.

"Ever since I was little, it's just been a thing in Rhode Island," she continues, adding that Dunkin coffee is so popular in the area "you can literally smell the coffee when you come up that 95 corridor going into Rhode Island and Massachusetts." In fact, coffee milk was declared the drink of Rhode Island in 1993 by the state legislature.

One theory states that Italian immigrants introduced sweetened coffee to Providence in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; another claims it may have been developed by a soda fountain operator who mixed leftover coffee grounds with milk and sugar. We do know that in the 1930s, lunch counters sold coffee milk as a child-friendly alternative for hot coffee .

And yes, coffee milk contains a trace amount of caffeine—about 15 percent of what's in a cup of hot coffee, and 40 percent as much as a serving of Coke. For anyone who doesn't feel comfortable giving children caffeine, however, a caffeine-free variety of coffee syrup exists. Another popular alternative is maple milk, which is made with local syrup. Plus, there's always chocolate milk.

How to Make Coffee Milk In Rhode Island, you can find coffee milk at your local grocery store, or even visit a dairy like Wright's and get it straight from the source.

If you're not in the Northeast, however, your best bet is to make your own coffee milk with coffee syrup at home. Puccetti also recommends this, adding that people can adjust the coffee-to-milk ratio exactly to their preference or explore other flavors of coffee syrup, like mocha or espresso.