Happy PSL season to all who celebrate. If you personally reject the nickname, I don’t blame you, but I also don’t make the rules. And if you don’t know what PSL means, we’re talking about pumpkin spiced lattes and I’m glad you’re here.
A quick google of PSL history tells me that Starbucks soft-launched the drink in 2003 and that it became a “cultural phenomenon” by 2010, though the company didn’t add any actual pumpkin puree to the drinks until 2015. Today, pumpkin spiced lattes are a harbinger of the arrival of autumn equivalent to cooler temperatures, the start of school sports and plastic skeletons at Costco.
I’m typically a black coffee drinker, but I make a hard pivot once or twice each fall for this seasonal treat, which is essentially a liquid dessert that commonly tastes more like hot cinnamon frosting than coffee.
By now, coffee shops nearly universally offer some version of a PSL. The ingredients vary slightly from place to place, but generally follow the Starbucks model, which is comprised of latte milk of choice with some sort of pumpkin spiced sauce or syrup (Starbucks’ version has sugar, condensed skim milk, pumpkin puree, natural flavors and some color additives, salt, and potassium sorbate, which acts as a preservative.) Then of course the brewed espresso.
We’re not done yet. There’s also whipped cream and vanilla syrup, which is where the cinnamon frosting vibe comes into play. All that is topped off with a dash of pumpkin pie spice mix, consisting of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves.
A 16-ounce Starbucks PSL has 50 grams of sugar, which is roughly the same as a Coca-Cola, meaning you won’t feel awesome when you’re finished drinking it, but you will have had a really nice time.
Sometime after 2015 when Starbucks started adding actual kabocha pumpkin puree to the beverage, the seasonal trend was fully established and had begun to evolve, which I imagine is how more squash-forward iterations of the drink began to evolve.
This year, I took it upon myself to sample some other PSLs in town so that I could be fully confident in my Black Cup PSL recommendation to you. Here’s what I found:
Black Cup
A few years ago, I heard rumors about Black Cup’s homemade, “iconic” (their words, and mine) pumpkin puree “that actually tastes like pumpkin,” and went out of my way to taste it. It is a bit thicker, uses fresh ginger and is heavily spiced, and delicious. It was the pumpkin spiced latte I didn’t know I was missing, and the one I joyfully seek out each year.
The OG, Starbucks
I know I’ve just shared how they use real squash, but you’d truly never know it. I would describe Starbucks’ version like the chocolate milk of pumpkin spiced lattes. You really can’t taste any coffee. Or pumpkin. But you are participating in a capitalistic autumnal American tradition, and love or hate it, those have their place.
Kaladi Brothers
A few days after the Starbucks’ vanilla syrup aftertaste had finally cleared from my palette, I was ready to try another. Kaladi’s is less sweet with a more prominent coffee flavor but no discernable pumpkin. The name definitely relies more on the cinnamon and nutmeg. Those make for good espresso pairings in my opinion though, so I was overall happy with this one.
SteamDot
I had high expectations for SteamDot, which serves my favorite cup of black coffee in town. Unfortunately, this version was neither very pumpkiny nor spiced, and truly nothing special. Maybe SteamDot is too no-nonsense to fully commit to this fad. I’m not mad about that, but I definitely wouldn’t send anyone there if they’re a once-per-year or first-time PSL-drinker.
Chugach Mountain Roasters
New on the coffee scene, CMR is another shop slinging excellent espresso and reliably delicious lattes with made-in-house syrups. Because they’re innovators (and probably hate, but also can’t avoid the PSL trend) their take is called the “caliente pumpkin latte” and is made with a pumpkin puree, spices, and “a kiss of” ancho and gajillo chilis. I was satisfied but not wowed by this version. The coffee flavor came through and it wasn’t sickly sweet. But I didn’t really taste the pumpkin, chilis, or the spices so it was overall pretty forgettable.
Truly, I commend Starbucks for starting this seasonal beverage craze, if we can still call it that. In the end though, it turns out I could have saved my bloodstream from many hundreds of grams of added sugar and milligrams of caffeine by just sticking with Black Cup. That’s what I’ll do next year.
Jenny Weis writes for a variety of Alaska nonprofits and causes in between keeping up on Alaska's doughnut scene, sliding on snow, and gawking at cool plants and rocks along local trails.
