Today, it is quite challenging to tell whether the food or drinks you are consuming are good for your health. If you are keen on counting your daily calorie intake, you will want to know the ingredients in the foods and drinks you take. If you are a coffee lover watching your calorie intake, you will want to know whether your favorite coffee drink contains sugar. For instance, is there sugar in flavored coffee? What exactly is in flavored coffee? Keep reading to find out.
Essentially, flavored coffee beans or flavored coffee grounds do not contain sugar. Most flavored coffees are made by adding flavor extracts. Thus, pre-flavored coffee is free of sweeteners such as cane sugar, corn syrup, or sucralose. However, if you add creamer, sugar, milk, or syrup to your flavored coffee, you will introduce sugar into the drink.
How to Make Flavored Coffee
It will help to understand how flavored coffee is made to establish whether it contains sugar. Flavored coffee may contain flavors such as French vanilla, salted caramel, cinnamon, or pecan praline. Regardless of the type of flavored coffee you like most, how are these flavors added to coffee?
The flavors do not find their way into coffee beans naturally. These tasty essences are added to coffee beans artificially. Different flavoring oils, extracts, and additives may be added to coffee beans immediately after roasting. In this case, the flavored coffee beans will not have any added sugar.
However, if you make flavored coffee by adding flavored syrups after brewing, then your coffee may have added sugar depending on what makes up the syrups. You can avoid introducing sugar to your coffee by using sugar-free syrups to flavor brewed coffee.
How to Flavor Coffee Grounds
Sometimes, flavoring coffee is done after grinding the beans. The flavoring is done carefully to give the coffee delicate aromatic nuances and a delicious taste. The best-flavored ground coffee is made out of pure Arabica coffee beans. Arabica beans are low in acidity. Thus, they make less bitter coffee. Moreover, Arabica beans allow coffee connoisseurs to taste different coffee flavor notes more distinctly.
Once the beans are roasted as needed, concentrated flavorings are poured over the beans. They are given time to soak into the beans. The longer the flavorings soak, the stronger the flavorings. The flavorings infiltrate the beans through their porous exterior. Next, the beans are ground, resulting in flavored coffee grounds.
These flavorings are in the form of natural oils extracted from spices such as vanilla, cocoa, and almonds among others. Sometimes, artificial flavorings are used in place of natural flavorings. Artificial flavorings are often used in the large-scale flavoring of coffee blends as they are more economical to produce than natural flavorings.
Alternatively, you can add flavorings to your coffee after grinding. In this case, you can sprinkle flavorings such as cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, or cardamom directly on the ground coffee when brewing. As hot water passes through the ground coffee, the flavorings will also find their way into your hot cup of coffee.
How Many Calories Does Flavored Coffee Have?
Coffee brewed with pre-flavored coffee beans or ground coffee contains about 2 calories per cup. These calories are present in natural coffee oils. The added flavoring extracts do not contain calories. However, if you add syrups, creamers, milk, or sweeteners to your brewed coffee, you will increase its calorie content significantly.
Unsweetened flavored coffee contains the same number of calories as unsweetened black coffee. Thus, flavored coffee is a great option for people who want to treat their taste buds without consuming extra calories. Just ensure the flavoring used is an extract and not sugary flavored syrup.
Summary
Is there sugar in flavored coffees? The answer is no. Flavored coffee does not contain sugar. It is made by infusing flavoring oils or extracts with coffee beans. Thus, you will get a flavorful cup of coffee without extra calories. However, adding flavored syrups or creamers after brewing may introduce sugar into your flavored coffee.
