With or Without Food, How Do You Enjoy Your Coffee?

Your favorite hot beverage may be a typical choice to go along with your breakfast, but how about the rest of the day? Sweet? Savory? Either? What foods go best with coffee? Let's take a look at some of the more popular pairings.

Sure, your coffee is delicious with your eggs and bacon, your waffles or pancakes, your muffin or bagel, and just about any other breakfast food you might choose. That same coffee is equally tasty with your cake or pie, your tiramisu or crème brulee, and any other sweet treat you could think of. But is that all? No, not even close.

You can certainly enjoy your coffee on its own as well. Even having a tasting with a few different coffees can be a fun way to experience the nuanced flavors found in a single coffee or even across a few regional choices. Learn about how to conduct a coffee tasting with our Intro to Coffee Tasting series.

But let's get back to enjoying those coffees with food and learn more about how to pair different coffees with different foods. Though we will be looking at pairings that might seem odd (Coffee with cheese? You bet!), we will also look at how to combine the intricate flavors in coffees with complimentary flavors in foods.

Savory

Your savory breakfast foods like eggs and bacon, sausage, or ham will go well with the rich and winy notes found in our medium-roast Costa Rica Reserve. If you prefer your eggs scrambled and cooked with veggies and meats, as an omelet, that is, choose our Java 'Dutch Estate'. The heavy smoothness and slight spiciness can stand up to all the flavors found in your omelet. The quick finish of this brew means each bite is unencumbered by the flavors of the coffee. Yet another egg dish, the quiche, goes well with the hazelnut and grapefruit flavors found in our Papua New Guinea.

Earlier, we mentioned cheese and here we are. The creamy heaviness of cheese needs the heavy body and slight spiciness found in our India Mysore 'Gold Nugget'. How about spicy foods? Absolutely. The mild and fruity notes in our Organic Nicaragua 'Ceocafen' Fair Trade coffee are the perfect choice to temper the heat in those spicy dishes. Cool that heat even faster with one of our Iced Coffees. You can even pair coffee with beef. You will want something rich, dark, and peppery like our Sumatra Black Satin.

Sweet

Pairing coffee with something sweet may seem like a no-brainer. Because coffee starts out as a fruit, many coffees tend to bear those original fruity flavors. These flavors pair quite well with fruit. Strawberries, raspberries, and other juicy berries pair well with the layers of fruit flavors found in our Kenya AA. For juicy stone fruits like peaches and plums, reach for the sweet and fruity flavors found in our Tanzania Peaberry.

So many coffees have flavors of chocolate and caramel, how would these coffees pair with actual chocolate? Very well. For those milk chocolate treats, pair with our Hawaiian Kona 'Volcanic Estate'. The sweet chocolate and floral notes bring a vibrancy that works well with the smooth sweetness of milk chocolate. If the bittersweet flavors in dark chocolate are more to your liking, our Guatemala Antigua is heavy, spicy, and velvety rich that will play off the dark chocolate. For white chocolate cravings, pair with our Guatemala Antigua. The heaviness of this coffee is lightened by the mild flavors of the white chocolate.

Now that we've explored some options for pairing different foods with some of our best-selling coffees, which sound the most intriguing? What is your favorite coffee and food pairing? Share with us in the comments or on our Facebook page.