Coffee Pairing Suggestions

Chances are if you love coffee, you probably love food too! Let’s talk about some fun ways to pair different coffees with foods!

Just like with wine, what you consume while you’re drinking your coffee will affect the taste of the coffee. This can be a negative thing if the food overpowers or throws off the taste of the drink, but this can also be a really fun thing if the food highlights the best aspects of the drink or really brings the tasting notes to life! Here are some fun pairing ideas and some tips for deciding how to enjoy your next brew.

Tip #1: Know the tasting notes of the coffee. Whether you are reading the tasting notes off the bag or from the roaster’s website or you’ve tasted it before, keep in mind these flavors and then play them up with the pairing.

Here’s an example: for a coffee that has a lot of citrus notes you could play that up by making it into a coffee cocktail or soda. Add some soda water, mint, and orange simple syrup and the coffee will play nicely into the citrusy drink.

Tip #2: Opposites attract. Going off of our first tip above, if you know the tasting notes of a coffee, you can pair it with something that will contrast it in a good way.

For example, that coffee with a lot of citrus tasting notes would pair nicely with a dark chocolate cake! The brightness of the coffee will cut the heavy dark chocolate, and the two contrasting tastes will enhance one another. Along the same vein, this is why straight espresso goes so well with desserts. The bitterness cuts the sweetness of the dessert and heightens the flavors.

Tip #3: Serve a palette cleanser. Specialty coffee shops don’t just serve that side of sparkling water with espresso to look cool. It cleanses the palette and allows you to re-taste the espresso with every sip. If you’re serving coffee with some beautiful baked goods to your guests, consider adding some sparkling water to the table. Sips of the sparkling water between bites will prepare their palettes to discover anew the flavors of both the coffee and the baked treat!

Tip #4: These pairing practices can also be used when deciding whether or not to pair a coffee with milk. You can decide: does this coffee posses tasting notes that will be highlighted by milk or will the addition of milk clash with a tasting note or drown it out? This is often discovered by trail and error, but the better you get at singling out those tasting notes and learning how to pair them, the better you get at anticipating whether or not a coffee will do well as a milk-based drink or even if it would be highlighted by the addition of a flavor syrup.

Finally, here are some common tasting notes in coffee that pair/contrast well with desserts, breakfast foods, snacks, or flavor syrups. Use these as a cheat sheet and practice pairing foods with your coffee at home!

Floral
Vanilla
Brown Sugar
Chocolate
Nutty
Berries
Dried Fruit
Stone Fruit
Citrus

Remember you can play these notes up by pairing the coffee with a similar tasting food or you can contrast them by playing around with opposites. As with many coffee-related habits, the best way to get better at tasting and pairing coffees is by practicing. Invite your friends over and practice tasting together!

Let us know what combinations you come up with— we always love to hear from you all. And if you need some coffees to practice with, you can shop ours here!