Sweetening Coffee

[PCL]

Hello fellow caffeine addicts. First time over here on the board, so please bare with me.

Now, in my little hometown in this corner of the world, I've noticed that most cafes, coffee shops, restaurants are increasingly offering only brown/raw sugar for sweetening purposes.

Personally, I find that refined sugar works best. It doesn't alter the taste of the coffee, but rather, simply sweetens it. Raw and brown are good for cooking, glazing, etc, but in coffee, I'm not too keen on it. There's too much residual flavouring from the cane used to extract the sugar. The coffee becomes tinged. The beverage is... tainted.

Just me?

Insights appreciated.

[jgm]

I attended a coffee tasting at our local Starbuck's a few months ago. I don't normally care much for their coffee -- too strong, with a bit of a burnt taste. Their lattes are the best available locally, and in winter, I have them quite often, so I decided to see if I could find one of their coffees that I liked.

What I grew to understand in that tasting, was that certain ... uh, for lack of a better term... flavor qualities in certain coffees, marry well with certain other flavors. One coffee I tasted by itself, and didn't care for it. But then they passed out samples of their coffee cake, and it was a great combination! Ditto with other types of coffee and other desserts. I was pretty surprised. Very much like pairing wine and food.

I suspect there are some coffees that taste better with raw sugar, and others may taste better with refined sugar. And, of course, taste is pretty much a personal preference thing.

[highchef]

I have 3 intimate affairs wih coffee.

the first is a&p, this from shopping with my mom.

2 is something to do with Shreveport...mom was with it for a while, very different smell when it brewed.

3 is Community Coffee, which I grew up on and hubby did too. I use mid roast because he likes dark and I like lite and this one is perfect, Iespecially dripped into a french drip pot. I have guys who worked on this house 4-5years ago stop by for a cup. good stuff.

As far as sugar, it's domino's....regular white and evaporated milk if you have it. It's so rich, and dark and creamy it makes everyone very happy.

[PCL]

Thanks for the feedback.

I should clarify:

The coffee beverages I'm concerned with specifically are:

Caffe Latte, and Espresso.

The white/refined sugar thing was told to me when I worked in Italy. One never sees brown/raw sugar on the bar when one orders coffee in Italy.

For instant coffee at home, or brewed, or percolated etc etc, I always stick with white sugar. Evaporated milk is like, good for me, but my wife isn't a big fan, so we stay clear. In Malaysia, all coffee and tea, if requested with milk, is usually made with evaporated milk, and also, sweetened condensed milk.

[richl2214]

Thanks for the feedback.

I should clarify:

The coffee beverages I'm concerned with specifically are:

Caffe Latte, and Espresso.

The white/refined sugar thing was told to me when I worked in Italy. One never sees brown/raw sugar on the bar when one orders coffee in Italy.

For instant coffee at home, or brewed, or percolated etc etc, I always stick with white sugar. Evaporated milk is like, good for me, but my wife isn't a big fan, so we stay clear. In Malaysia, all coffee and tea, if requested with milk, is usually made with evaporated milk, and also, sweetened condensed milk.

←

I don't know how long ago you worked in Italy but I was just for three weeks in July. I was in Rome, Florence, Positano, Capri, Naples, Todi, Padua, Milan, etc. and almost EVERY cafe and espresso bar in Italy had brown/raw sugar on the counter. Most Italians seemed to be using brown/raw instead of the refined white. I prefer the raw sugar too.

Edited September 15, 2005 by richl2214 (log)

[PS]

My experience in France is that it's white sugar all the way there, so I tend to go for white to recreate that. Also, a Sicilian friend always uses white. I think if you use brown you can taste the difference it makes to the coffee - but if like that taste, then why not have it?

[Carolyn Tillie]

Raw for me as well -- although on a recent trip to Carmel, only brown sugar was available and I loved the deep, rustic flavor it added. White seems too strident.

[phaelon56]

I've never been able to tolerate even the slightest hint of sweetness in regular (e.g. drip or press pot) coffee but I do like a tiny hint of sweetness in machiatto's, straight espresso, cappuccino etc.

Once I tried raw sugar I was hooked. To my taste buds it has a more natural and less cloying sweetness that has a hitn of other flavor which marries well with espresso. In a pinch I'll still use a bit of white sugar if it's all that's available but I've grown to dislike the simple sweetness of refined white sugar.

I'll add that I worked as a waiter back int he late 1970's and the bistro where I worked offered raw sugar for coffee at that time. We had customers who raved about how much better it was and I (privately) pooh-poohed them as being folks who just thought they detected a difference. How wrong I was but of course it's all about personal taste.

And the only place I saw raw sugar last year in Paris was at a Starbucks - sadly it was also the only place where I could get a drink that remotely resemble a proper cappuccino (post trip research has turned up a few places in Paris where one can get a real traditional cappuccino of good quality but they're few and far between).

[jayt90]

I like a smallish teaspoon of medium Quebec maple syrup in regular drip coffee, usually JBM.

[tryska]

brown sugar for me when i sweeten it.

i picked up honey as a sweetener from a greek friend in college. that takes soem getting used to.

love condensed milk in coffee if there is some available.

word of caution - do not try palm sugar.

it is very bad with coffee. at least this last time i tried it. I could have sworn that's what it was sweetened with when I lived in India.

so either it was the type of coffee i was using, or the palm sugar i found is total crap.

either way - bad - very very bad.

[Mooshmouse]

I like a smallish teaspoon of medium Quebec maple syrup in regular drip coffee, usually JBM.

←

Vancouver eGulleter hopkin does a riff on Vietnamese iced coffee at his shop, the Elysian Room, using cream and maple syrup in place of condensed milk.

love condensed milk in coffee if there is some available.

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Heaven, especially in Vietnamese coffee (iced or hot).

[PCL]

It seems like there is a camp for the raw/brown stuff, in that its purported to be subtler, less strident, more flavoursome....

...and there's a camp for alternatives, like maple syrup and honey...

...and a camp for the white/refined...

and RichL2214... the places you mention... all with high concentrations of foreigners, tourists, etc... therefore perhaps more ammenable to providing for all tastes... i didn't work or live in those types of areas... and you wouldn't put more than a teaspoonful anyway, just to sweeten the coffee a little, in an espresso...

...but nevertheless, i think its safe to consider this one closed: do what one likes, but it still pisses me off that some places just refuse to pass on the sandy white stuff!!

[melonpan]

every once in a while ill add molassas. or honey to my coffee. ill also use white or brown sugar. i guess im not too picky.

i am picky about when my sugar tastes "papery" though. that sometimes happens with those sugar in the raw packets. yuck.

but i admit to loving molassas and will eat it straight out of the jar. i also add it to my yogurt.

[melonpan]

and then, when i am drinking coffee after a meal with a dessert that someone slaved over or that i am paying for at a restaurant, i cannot have any added sugar to my coffee.

[PCL]

and then, when i am drinking coffee after a meal with a dessert that someone slaved over or that i am paying for at a restaurant, i cannot have any added sugar to my coffee.

←

...yeah, because if you have coffee and dessert together, nothing wrong with that, it makes the dessert yucky, and the coffee as well...

but if the coffee comes after dessert, almost always an espresso for me, then its okay to put a little white sugar in there...

[sanrensho]

Lately, I've been enjoying hot Vietnamese coffee (Trung Nguyen brand) with just a teaspon or so of raw sugar. The few time that I've had to use refined sugar, I've definitely noticed a difference. I prefer the fuller flavor that the raw sugar imparts.

[kingseven]

From my time in Italy and from my experience working for Italians there is no hard and fast rule about sugar. Whatever is to hand is usually about it.

From my point of view taste has to be your only guide. There are so many different sugar products, some genuine some awful. I rarely use sugar (though I put far too much in tea!) but sometimes i will use a little Xylitol (its the same sweetness rating as sugar, but actually fights cavities - its the stuff they use in all those candies that claim they are good for the teeth.)

I enjoy my coffee too much to use sugar which tends to mask tastes. Well textured and properly heated milk foam has that extra sweetness so I never really need it in a good milk drink.

If the coffee is bad, for me, there is nothing even a pound of sugar can do for it.

[Rebecca263]

I prefer my Cuban coffee with white sugar and some espressos the same. I really love the taste of a good African bean that's been VERY roasted, then put into Abrahim the ibrik and cooked with some Florida Crystals Sugar. That stuff is the bomb of taste, in my book!

Sugar in my coffee

Sugar in my tea

Sugar in my oatmeal

Sugar, lots for me!

[PCL]

Rock on Rebecca Number 263

[hopkin]

oh my, "the rape of the cuisine".

this is like when someone says white chocolate is my favorite chocolate, or do you like a good piece of meat well yes i eat KFC all the time...

good coffee is naturally sweet, with a pleasant bitter character as in chocolate, perhaps an aroma of toasted nuts or vanilla and the flavour of coffee, not sugar or cream or anything else.

treat good coffee like you would any other ingredient, don't bastardise it. coffee can taste as good as roasted coffee smells.

[Rebecca263]

oh my, "the rape of the cuisine"...

this is like when someone says white chocolate is my favorite chocolate, or do you like a good piece of meat well yes i eat KFC all the time...

treat good coffee like you would any other ingredient, don't bastardise it...

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We've secretly replaced Humblekin's post with Folger Crystals, let's see if anyone notices!

[hopkin]

We've secretly replaced Humblekin's post with Folger Crystals, let's see if anyone notices!

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the most important answer is your own.

[phaelon56]

coffee can taste as good as roasted coffee smells.

Yet.... tragically.... but in so many places it does not. This is especially true of espresso but properly made drip coffee (or press pot) is also difficult to find in the US. Even in major markets such as NYC (although the situation there is slowly improving).

I travel regularly for work and can confirm that this deplorable situation is not unique to my small city in central NY state. It's endemic in most regions.

Yes there are cities such as Vancouver and Seattle where one actually has multiple espresso purveyors to choose from who offer top shelf shots and properly micro-foamed milk. But apart from those two metro areas and some isolated pockets elsewhere it's still dismal.

Even with bad coffee I can not tolerate the slightest hint of sweetness. If I so much as place a used spoon with a trace of sugar residue in my drip coffee I find the result abominable.

But with espresso it's only the shots I pull at home and those I get to sample on occasional visits to great cafés that can be drunk without a trace amount of sugar added. I recently had the pleasure of enjoying machiatto's at Victrola and also at Cafe Vivace - both in Seattle.

The Victrola drinks (several consumed over a two day period) edged out all the other Seattle espresso I sampled that weekend. Vivace was a not too distant second and both places offered espressos that would have been spoiled by the addition of any sugar (and I added none). But other espresso drinks I had in Seattle (which will remain nameless for now) had a bitter note that cried out for the counterbalance of some raw sugar. Which I dutifully added so as not to waste the drink.

[racheld]

It has been a delightful surprise to find two old favorites mentioned today---Community just above, and Eight O'Clock in another thread. I've been reading coffee reviews and mentions and diatribes in several publications and online for quite some time, and thought perhaps my plebeian taste would sink me into coffee oblivion, banished from the sipping ranks forever.

I was beginning to think that if I did not brew Desiderata #3 or lay my hands on some Earl's Purchase or Komodo Leavings at Sunrise, I had not lived.

My own love affair with coffee began at four, when the lovely woman across the street (Mother of four rowdy, loud, elbows-and-fists boys) undertook the task of teaching me to read. I would climb her white stone steps, stand in that fierce Southern sunlight between the fragrant, reaching evergreen shrubbery, and ring her doorbell every day. And no matter what the hour, the door would open upon paradise, the aromas of coffee and old paper, mingled with the wisp-odors of her Kents and cologne.

We would read for a bit as the dustmotes danced in the bright sunlight, then she would call out, "We ladies would like our coffee now, Birdie." I could hear the preparations through the swinging dining-room door, as Birdie scooped and ground and measured. Water hissed from faucet to saucepan, clanked gently onto stoveburner. Coffee was scooped in, boiled up, taken off the fire, set on for another bare simmer, then cascaded through a brown-tinged stocking affair into the small flowered pot.

I'd never seen this coffee-making before or since, until a few days ago, I channel-surfed through a Penelope Cruz movie, paused for a moment, and there it was, a bedraggled, limp tobacco-brown gauzy bag, through which she poured a concoction of cinnamon sticks, coffee, herbs and perhaps wolfbane, all of which combined in a brew which made whole populations of men follow her down the street.

Ours had no such properties, but it was wonderful and sweet with scoops of Domino and richened with cream. It was round and scalding and perfect. It held the essence of whatever the first-planted bean reached for when it thrust its first two little leaves out into that hot damp sunlight. I did not know the words Finish or Depth or Roast in reference to the brew; I just knew it was a wonderful discovery, and I loved it. It's played a part in my enjoyment of coffee all my life, and I'll always remember the dear kind woman who fostered my first steps into good books and good coffee.

Edited September 20, 2005 by racheld (log)

[Jason Perlow]

I've always been partial to raw or turbinado sugar, especially if I am having it black, such as with a superpremium coffee like a JBM or Kona.