Flavored Coffee

Coffee should taste like coffee. This is the purist’s mantra. Flavored coffee is an aberration. Something invented for people who dislike coffee so much that even cream and sugar aren’t enough to make it enticing. No, for these coffee haters who need their hot morning jolt of caffeine, they require a drink that tastes like candy, or nuts, or pastry.

It even begs the question, why drink coffee at all?

Then again, chocolate should taste like chocolate, and yet I do not think twice about having chocolate truffles that are infused with the flavors of chai or hazelnuts or Grand Marnier. Even serious chocolatiers who sell single origin chocolate wafers also sell delicate flavored chocolate confections.

Ultimately, chocolate and coffee are fundamentally similar foods. At their best, both offer an incredibly rich and textured sensory experience. So why is it okay to have flavored chocolate, while having flavored coffee is looked upon with disdain?

One answer has to do with the ingredients.

Chocolatiers steep tea leaves and spices in scalded cream before using all of that hot luscious butterfat to melt pure dark chocolate into a silky ganache. Coffee roasters simply open up a vial of eggnog flavor and pour it onto their beans. Perhaps that’s an oversimplification.

But most commercial coffee flavorings are so persistent that coffee sellers need to use two different grinders: one for unflavored beans and the other for their adulterated coffee. The problem is that the flavoring agents stick to the grinding mechanisms and contaminate successive batches of beans that pass through the machine. It would seem as if a store would need as many grinders as they stocked flavors. But perhaps they think the eggnog coffee drinker won’t mind (or notice) the hint of blueberry from the grinder’s prior run.

Although I don’t think that’s the full story.

A while back I went to a coffee joint named Philz in San Francisco. And Phil does something remarkable. He’s spent 25 years playing around with different roasts, different beans and different blends, and has found ways of coaxing clear and clean flavors out of coffee beans.

So much so that when I had a sip of my freshly brewed cup I had to confirm that it was not actually a flavored coffee.

And while I could recognize and marvel at the achievement of roasting and blending, I was a bit disappointed. I wanted complexity and balance, not a dominant and focused impression of nuts and chocolate. On one level it was very tasty. But there was a part of me suggesting that this wasn’t coffee, this was some coffee colored confection.

Still, I’m looking forward to future visits, and now that my coffee obsession is reaching a fevered pitch, I may even order some Philz online and have it delivered. What’s changed?

Perhaps now I’m more open to the idea than I once was. It is easy to be close-minded about a matter of taste, especially when all the evidence that surrounds you reinforces a long-held belief. But the more I think about coffee the more I can imagine that, like with chocolate, the judicious use of high quality ingredients could complement and even enhance the natural flavor of the bean and the roast. In good conscience I cannot vilify a pinch of freshly ground cardamom or a soupçon of cocoa nibs.

I know in some circles that is akin to blasphemy. Just don’t go thinking for a minute that I’m getting soft or open minded, because there is still no room for banana nut creme coffee or a peppermint latte.

If you want a cool minty sensation with your latte, light up a Kool or pop an Altoid. Yuck.