Five Tips On Selecting The Best Flavored Coffee Beans
Flavored coffee has been around ever since people first began growing and brewing coffee. The Arabs, for example, used to flavor their coffee with cinnamon, spices and alcoholic spirits. Westerners stopped adding flavors to their coffee, preferring a simple cup of pure black caffeine. But today's coffee flavoring revival began back in the 1970s in America. Now, coffee consumers worldwide demand more flavor from their black brew. And coffee beans are being flavored with almost any flavor you can imagine. A quick search on the Internet will bring up hundreds of flavored coffee beans for sale, with flavors ranging from butterscotch to gingerbread to chocolate fudge and even baklava. Here are five things to know about flavored coffee beans: Coffee beans roasted and flavored Flavor is added to the coffee bean once it has been freshly roasted. It is a relatively simple process aided by modern-day technology, though the flavorings while mimicking real flavors, are quite often chemically reproduced. There are organic alternatives to coffee flavoring and they can easily be found at your local coffee retailer or online. How is flavor added? The process of adding flavor to coffee beans begins with freshly harvested and roasted beans, which are coated with flavor compounds. These flavor compounds supplement the original taste of the coffee. Benefits of flavored coffee Apart from the flavor injection, flavored coffee boasts a longer shelf than regular unflavored coffee. That's because coffee beans, like all things, undergo a natural aging process which results in a loss of flavor. Flavoring the beans then, combats these effects once the coffee packaging has been opened. Adverse effects of flavored coffee While flavor might be enhanced do keep in mind that the processing a product undergoes by the time it reaches you, the unhealthier it becomes. Coffee is the already the most highly processed product on the market today and extra processing to add flavor just makes it more so. There are alternatives however. Many smaller coffee manufacturers are produced organically flavored coffee, using real ingredients instead of identical flavorings. Seek these out.