9 surprising things to try in your coffee

Sugar and milk in your coffee? How conventional and unimaginative. Purists may scoff and tut as you try to enliven your coffee with, let’s say unusual, extra components to give it that little bit more of a punch or a zing. Here at UKVending we are all about pushing out the boundaries, we might not like all of the suggestions on our taste buds but we’re willing to give it a try.

The first suggestion is Cardamom. This spice is extremely common in the Middle East and can give your cup of coffee an exotic flavour. There is also a positive benefit of using it in coffee as it has the effect of neutralising the detrimental effects of caffeine. The easiest ways of adding cardamom to your cup is either to ground up a couple of seeds into your beans before grinding or to simply sprinkle some ground cardamom on the top of your freshly brewed cup of coffee.

Salt: Yes Salt. Many people swear that a small amount of salt in cold coffee adds a huge zing. It can also help soften the bitterness of poorer quality ground coffee.

Our third suggestion is Cinnamon. This spice can replace your cream and sugar and in so doing will reduce your calorie intake substantially. What is more the addition of cinnamon will also give added health benefits as a number of components in the spice give a boost to the human immune system. The Mexican’s have been doing this for centuries with their café de olla drink. You can replicate it by placing a cinnamon stick in your brew for a delicious alternative to standard coffees.

Now here’s one that took us at UKVending by surprise. How many of you would consider having a coffee made with butter? Yes butter. Traditionally in Tibet the locals drink Tibetan yak butter tea and the western world has taken this idea and made what has become known as ‘Bulletproof Coffee’ after the film ‘Bulletproof Monk’ about a Tibetan monk. You see what they did there? Butter in coffee is not as crazy as it sounds as many wellness experts believe it can be used as an alternative for breakfast.

Alcohol: No surprise here for anyone who enjoys an Irish Coffee once in a while. However the Irish don’t have the market sown up to themselves around the world there are numerous different varieties of alcoholic coffees. In Sweden there is a thing called a kaffekask which involves strong vodkas.

Vanilla Extract: This is ideal if you like the sweet taste but don’t want to use sugars in your coffee. It only takes a precious few drops of the extract to give a distinctive new taste. Another alternative is to try almond extract.

Coconut milk: Long seen as one of the staples of health food marketplace Coconut Milk is extremely good for you and makes a superb alternative to cow’s milk as well as adding a subtle flavour of coconut to the coffee. You can also mix it up with vanilla extract to make a homemade coffee creamer.

Around the office at UKVending we discussed this one and then went off and tried it ourselves. Add a few scoops of ice cream to your coffee. We watched as the scoops initially floated on the top until they melted into the coffee and gave us a thick dessert type drink. As always someone beat us to the idea. The Germans have for a long time had a drink called Eiskaffee which is blended ice cream and coffee.

The main ingredient in ice cream is eggs and yes someone has proposed dropping raw egg into your coffee. This time this idea hails from Scandinavia. The idea is that the egg clarifies the coffee giving it a perfect colour and no sediment