Waiter, There's a Strawberry in My Coffee! (Flavoring, That Is)

Though you might have missed it, there was an important meeting in Nuremburg Germany last month which generated a lot of interest in food flavorings. Döhler, a large European food flavoring manufacturer, discussed a wide range of ways to add flavorings to beverages. Guy Montague-Jones wrote up one report which mentioned coffee.

It seems that the juice market has been a little stagnated recently, due to the economy, so Döhler is trying to jump-start it by imagining as many new “juice concepts” as possible. One way this was done was to separate parts of the day and structure juices for each segment. For example, breakfast juice could be developed which also included fruit pieces and oat fibers, kind of an oatmeal turned juice. All that’s missing is the egg.

For mid-day, it was suggested that a caffeine source such as green coffee beans could provide a natural alternative to the artificial energy drinks that are gaining such popularity. Evening’s contribution to juiciness came in the form of non-alcoholic juice cocktails. What Döhler is calling “Strawberry Margaritas” used to be called “Shirley Temples”. But who even remembers who Shirley Temple was nowadays?

At first hearing, green coffee bean infused juices sound somewhat alarming. Coffee in juice? Who would have imagined – except of course a company suffering from a stagnated profit margin. Regardless, the more you think about it, the less disgusting the idea becomes. We have already bridged the coffee-juice gap with the flavored coffee genre. We have both flavored coffee beans as well as fruited syrups such as strawberry, blackberry, raspberry, blueberry, red currant, and peach. (ROASTe carries three brands of such syrups.) So fruited coffee isn’t a new concept and we’ve even grown to love fruit-sweetened coffee. Coffee-flavored fruit is just a step up, after all.

After a Google search it appears that such coffee infused juices are still only in concept form. We can still enjoy fruit flavored coffees, and ROASTe has a good selection of both flavored coffee bean-based varieties and the syrups with which you can flavor any coffee drink. With New Year's Eve celebrations ahead, you might want to order a few flavorings or special flavored coffees to add to the festivities.