Give Your Coffee A Flavor Boost With This Unexpected Spice

Coffee beverages encompass a truly mind-blowing range of flavors. Factors like the terroir of beans, subsequent processing, type of roasting, and brewing all translate to the palate of a cup. Yet despite such complexity, it's miraculous how well coffee melds with other ingredients, too. Even an unexpected spice like clove mingles with the caffeinating drink, offering a bold — yet enticing — flavor boost.

So to help you navigate pairing clove and coffee, Food Republic's fortunate for the guidance of Heather Perry. As the CEO of Klatch Coffee, a 2x US barista champion, and former President of the Specialty Coffee Association, she's certainly well-versed in the nuance of brewing. According to her, "clove can be a great jumping-off point" for those who haven't spiced their coffee previously. The spice offers warm, sugary, and just lightly bitter flavors that meld seamlessly into the cup.

When imagining the combo, a beverage like a creamy pumpkin spice latte understandably comes to mind. Yet Perry explains that you can meld just the two ingredients to delicious effect. Whether simply "adding ground clove to your actual coffee grinds" or integrating "whole clove right on top of the coffee grounds for a less intense flavor," the spice provides several options for combination. So reach for a small amount of these dried flower buds, and enjoy your joe in a new style.

Clove mixed with coffee may seem unusual, but it's a traditional beverage in some regions. You'll find cloves incorporated into uniquely flavored Turkish coffee recipes, and they also appear in Yemeni coffee-making tradition. To sip on such traditional styles, invest in a brewer like an ibrik, or seek out a cafe of such origins.

Furthermore, you can also merge clove and coffee by using brewers already commonly found at home. If espresso is your go-to, Perry notes you can "add ground clove directly to your cup after pulling the shot." Yet for optimal balance of spice and coffee flavors, she cites a pour-over as the best option. Since extraction takes a few minutes, this will "allow the aroma of the spices mixing with the coffee to shine through," Perry explains. Plus, the technique enables gradually adding in small amounts of clove both before and after brewing. Everyone has their ideal spice balance, but "the finished product should still taste primarily like coffee," she says.

Whichever method you choose, keep in mind that cloves can pose issues to coffee equipment. "Adding spices directly to your portafilter could lead to clogs," while "grinding spices in your coffee grinder can impart those flavors to the grinder itself," cautions Perry. So for the easiest usability, she also recommends crafting a clove syrup. Poorly executed, flavored coffee can be a red flag for some aficionados, but when brewed with such care, it's a winning combination.