Good coffee is like good wine. It has subtle flavors and aromas that vary with the type of coffee, the soil in which it was grown and the care given in its cultivation. Despite the very good reasons for drinking coffee black, many people drink flavored coffee. Why drink flavored coffee that commonly masks the native flavor of your cup of java? One common reason for going the flavored coffee route is that you are providing flavor where there is none such as with very old, stale, low quality coffee.
Use Flavoring to Hide the Fact That Coffee Is Poor Quality
Being students of history here at Buy Organic Coffee, we are reminded of the story of how spices from the orient made their way into Europe in the Middle Ages. Prior to the Crusades (1096-1300) only the wealthy could afford spices like saffron, mace, ginger, nutmeg, or black pepper. In fact, these items were so valuable that they were used as replacements for money. For example, it took seven fat oxen to pay for a pound of nutmeg or a horse to pay for a pound of saffron. Prices went down and common folks were able to afford spices when trade increased from the orient. At this time the main reason for using spices was to disguise offensive odors and flavors because this was not the age of refrigeration. The point of this little tour of history is that routinely using flavorings is a way of masking bad coffee!
Why Using Flavorings At Starbucks?
Starbucks, like the vast majority of coffee shops, serves good coffee. They store their coffee as green beans, only roast enough to use for the day and buy high quality beans sourced from all over the world. Thus, the odds are that a cup of black coffee at Starbucks will have great flavor and aroma. If you need to add a little sugar that will generally not affect the flavor and if you need a little milk or cream to make the coffee gentler for your stomach, that makes sense. However, if you are adding any of the 87,000 different flavor combinations that Starbucks offers, we wonder why you are bothering with a more expensive and high quality coffee when you could just as easily use cheap, stale coffee that does not have any flavor to mask. The business model that Starbucks uses may need to change because it is interfering with their service and losing them customers but the fact remains that even with just a few flavors folks will be negating the great coffee they are getting by covering up all of its good qualities.
Are There Flavorings That Work With Coffee’s Natural Flavor and Aroma?
The good news is that there are a handful of flavoring that can be used with coffee that enhance coffee’s natural qualities instead of covering them up. These include nutmeg, clove, and cardamon. In each case it is important to use the flavoring in moderation. Nevertheless, each of these can be counted on to improve your coffee drinking experience and not negate the presence of a really good coffee that you are starting with.