8 Bottled And Canned Dunkin' Coffees, Ranked

America may run on Dunkin' — or so the slogan goes, anyway — but most of us imagine the Dunkin' in question to be a coffee purchased at one of the chain's plentiful locations. There's another way to run on Dunkin', as it turns out, and that would be by purchasing a bottled or canned beverage at a grocery store or gas station.

Indeed, there's a whole world of Dunkin' beverages readily at our disposal, with no trip through the drive-thru required. Starting in 2017, Dunkin' (back when it was Dunkin' Donuts – remember those days?) dropped a line of bottled iced coffees, with flavors reminiscent of those you'd find in-store: French vanilla, mocha, espresso, and original. Somewhere along the way, the espresso favor was phased out in favor of caramel, and this power-quad of flavors has remained steadily available at major grocery stores. In 2023, Dunkin' released a bakery-inspired trio of canned iced coffees, and though these sweet sips are a little harder to come by, two of the flavors — brownie batter donut and cake batter donut — are still available in certain stores and locations.

I consider myself to be both a lifelong Dunkin' fan and someone who enjoys the brand's bottled iced coffees. So, I've put them to the taste test, alongside the canned ones and some larger bottled varieties — like butter pecan and unsweetened. To determine which Dunkin' bottled and canned coffees are the best (and which ones are skippable), I paid attention to overall flavor balance and which ones felt true to the flavor they were meant to be representing. I also noted any flavors that were downright awful or those that were just okay, but couldn't really stand out above the rest.

When I was trying to source the coffees for this ranking, I had a difficult time finding the cans — and particularly the cake batter donut flavor. Despite having been released in 2023, the canned coffees already seem to be phasing off of shelves, and after one taste of the cake batter donut flavor, I can easily see why.

When I first sipped on this coffee, a question immediately popped into my mind: Why is it sour? Indeed, a coffee that's supposed to boast the flavor of a cake batter donut just tasted sour yet cloyingly sweet at the same time. It was an absolute mess of drink, and it tasted nothing like cake batter or a donut — or even like any bakery good of any sort for that matter.

I really couldn't find any redeeming qualities in this canned coffee, so it was a pretty easy choice for last place on this list. It's a shame, because the thought of a cake batter donut-flavored coffee has a certain appeal, but I couldn't get past the strange sourness and overall unappetizing flavors that this one offered up.

As someone who enjoys a sweet coffee beverage from time to time but mostly just drinks coffee black, I have a special place in my heart for plain, unsweetened, black iced coffee. There's typically not much that can go wrong with black coffee, unless it tastes burnt or particularly acidic. Otherwise, it's a safe bet and can possibly offer up nice flavors all its own, like richness or even notes of chocolate.

Suffice to say, Dunkin's unsweetened black iced coffee pretty much met my expectations. There was a certain robustness to this coffee that I enjoyed, and while it may come across as a bit too strong for some, I actually enjoyed the boldness. I did find that the coffee leaned a bit strong on the acidic side, but it was nothing that felt unbearable. Ultimately, this is a solid black coffee, but it's just that — black coffee, which can only be so exciting, hence why I'm not ranking this one too high. In a lineup with delightfully sweet flavors and promises of creamy goodness, a plain, unsweetened, black coffee is naturally going to take the back-burner.

When a coffee is original-flavored, there's a good chance that it's going to taste just like — you guessed it — coffee. And, true to form, Dunkin's original bottled iced coffee does indeed taste like coffee, and not much else. I think this is both a good and bad thing. It's a good thing for those who like their coffee both sweet and creamy, but don't want added flavors like vanilla or caramel. It's a bad thing for those who are looking for any sort of complexity, because ultimately, what you see is what you get with this flavor.

I enjoyed Dunkin's original iced coffee enough, but it really didn't stand out at all in a lineup of objectively more exciting or intriguing flavors. I did appreciate the smoothness that this coffee had to offer, as well as its ability to somehow perfectly balance the fine line between being just sweet enough and too sweet. It's a great choice for those coffee purists out there who want their coffee to taste like coffee. But, I ultimately found Dunkin's original iced coffee to be a little too plain Jane and a little too safe to rank any higher.

I'm almost always a fan of mocha-flavored coffee beverages, either iced or hot. So, I find myself leaning towards any mocha option when it's presented in a lineup. Much to my surprise, this mocha iced coffee flavor wasn't my favorite out of the four classic bottled iced coffee flavors — and it wasn't even my second-favorite. Before any mocha lovers get upset, let me clarify that this iced coffee wasn't bad by any means, but I did find it to be lacking a little bit in terms of flavor and balance.

While I would expect a straightforward coffee flavor from the original iced coffee, I was definitely looking for a little something more from the mocha version. Unfortunately, this one tasted a little too much like plain, sweetened coffee and not nearly enough like chocolate. I can acknowledge that sometimes mochas are simply too chocolatey and teeter into a realm that's simultaneously too sweet and too bitter all at once, so at least this drink doesn't do that. But there just wasn't enough mocha goodness to make this one stand out too much, hence why it's falling relatively low on my list. Fortunately, there's no bad flavors here, I just wish there was a little more of the good flavors.

After tasting the cake batter donut canned coffee, I was pretty nervous to crack open the brownie batter donut flavor. Much to my immense relief, I actually found this flavor to be really pleasant and surprisingly complex. At worse, I anticipated that this coffee would taste as weirdly sour and awful as its cake batter counterpart; at best, I figured this coffee would taste like a sweet mocha coffee and not much else. To be fair, it does taste similar to mocha, but the brownie aspect is really apparent, proving that Dunkin' is capable of transforming a baked good into a coffee concoction.

At first, this coffee tasted really chocolatey, then notes of brownie batter came through. I also found the drink to taste mildly nutty, almost like a Ferrero Rocher candy. Is this Dunkin' canned coffee incredibly sweet? Yes. Is it almost so sweet that it tastes more like chocolate milk than it does coffee? Possibly, but there really is something about that unique brownie batter flavor that made me enjoy this beverage regardless. I'll assent that this canned coffee is not for those purists who actually want to, well, taste their coffee, but it is for those who like it sweet, rich, and super chocolatey. 

French vanilla is a pretty common flavor in the coffee world, but what makes vanilla French, you may ask? Well, in terms of ice cream, the difference between vanilla and French vanilla comes down to the latter's custard base, which gives it an overall richer flavor profile. In terms of this Dunkin' French vanilla iced coffee, I couldn't exactly tell you what makes the vanilla French, but I could tell you that the French vanilla does make this coffee taste good.

Vanilla is always a safe bet when it comes to coffee, and it turns out that French vanilla is a comparably safe bet, too. It's hard to beat the subtle sweetness and light vanilla flavor that this iced coffee has to offer, and I found the sweetness, creaminess, vanilla flavor, and coffee flavor to all balance really well in this drink. Unlike with the mocha iced coffee, I found that the vanilla flavor was more pronounced in the coffee without being overbearing or excessive (as if vanilla ever could be). Light, perfectly sweet, and delightfully creamy, I don't really have any complaints about this Dunkin' iced coffee flavor, but there were ultimately a couple flavors that I liked just a bit more.

Caramel-flavored coffee can be a bit of a toss up — sometimes it's got that really nice, rich, luscious caramel flavor, and other times it just tastes more sweet than anything else. I'm happy to report that Dunkin's caramel iced coffee falls into the former category, meaning that this little bottle of coffee packed an almost impressive level of caramel flavor. This coffee is sweet, no doubt, but there's such a richness to it that few of the other iced coffees on this list can compete with. 

As I sipped on this caramel iced coffee, I noticed that there was almost a salted caramel flavor to it; the flavor is just meant to be caramel, but each sip was vaguely reminiscent of biting into a fresh, salted caramel candy. I really enjoyed the richness and depth of the flavor in this coffee, and I appreciated that there was a little more complexity than what some other coffees have to offer. For example, this bottle had a slightly nutty undertone, which may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I'm pretty confident that any caramel lover would agree that Dunkin' pretty much nailed the flavor in its iced coffee.

Butter pecan swirl is a flavor that you can get in your iced coffee when you order directly at Dunkin', but otherwise, it's not part of that four-flavor assortment of bottles that are so ubiquitous in grocery stores. You can get butter pecan-flavored iced coffee in bottled form, but it's not quite as widespread as other flavors. And it comes in a bigger, 40-ounce bottle (which I found stocked at Target, for anyone curious). Needless to say, I hadn't tried Dunkin's butter pecan-flavored iced coffee before, but after finally giving it a go, I was left wondering where it's been all my life.

For those who enjoy ultra-rich coffee, this butter pecan flavor is pretty much the ultimate jackpot. Every sip was rich and buttery, with nutty undertones that weren't incredibly overbearing but were still consistently present. Also, for what it's worth, I'm typically not a fan of pecans of pecan flavor in general, yet I still found this iced coffee flavor to be the best in the lineup. If that doesn't prove how good it is, then I don't know what will.

Ultimately, I really enjoyed the balance of flavor that this coffee had to offer, with rich, sweet, buttery, and coffee-forward notes mingling on the tongue quite nicely. I also didn't find this coffee to be overly sweet, making for a consistently delightful drinking experience from start to finish.

When sampling Dunkin's lineup of bottled and canned coffees, naturally, I let flavor be the guiding factor in determining which ones were better than others. This process is subjective, of course, so if you downright don't like buttery or nutty flavors, then you'd disagree with my first place choice. I tried to consider beyond the flavor, however, and took into consideration which flavors felt more balanced than others, which ones were perhaps a bit too sweet, or which ones simply dulled in comparison to more interesting flavors.

I also had to consider those flavors that were downright bad and not at all true to the flavor they were meant to represent. In this case, there was only one coffee — the cake batter donut flavor — that I felt was truly awful, so everything else on this list I found to be palatable at the very least. It ultimately comes down to personal preference, but I found that approaching Dunkin's lineup of bottled and canned coffees with a certain neutrality — having little inherent bias or preference towards one flavor or the other, and being open-minded to all of them — made the process of ranking them pretty straightforward and easy.