What is Flavored Coffee: How is it Made and Which is Right for You?

When you visit any of our Lucky Goat Cafés or our online store, you will find a pretty large variety of types of coffees. You’ll see signature blends that have been on our shelves for nearly a decade, seasonally rotating single origins that are one-of-a-kind experiences, and coffees prepared for different brewing methods like cold brew grinds and single serve pods. A category of our coffee that leads in popularity throughout the seasons, however, is flavored coffee.

Our lineup includes signature flavored coffees that stay on our shelf year-round and rotating seasonal options, available for limited times only. This contains the excitement in the seasonal months when they’re featured and makes production more streamlined.

What is Flavored Coffee?

Flavored coffee is a category of offerings that has some sort of added flavoring once the coffee has been roasted. Sometimes, this can include spices and extracts, but most of the time, it involves using aromatic oils, like in the case of Lucky Goat’s flavored lineup. The flavoring agent comes in the form of coffee beans that are coated in a strong concentration of aromatic oils. These are mixed with a large batch of coffee to disperse the flavoring throughout the bag. When the coffee is ground, it further disperses the flavoring and makes the entire batch smell like a variety of flavors. The oils that are added are sugar-free, allergen-free, non-nutritive add-ins that allow you to enjoy a wide variety of flavors instead of the sweetened, syrupy alternative.

How Does it Work? 

What is interesting about flavored coffee is that it doesn’t truly taste like the listed flavor—it tricks our brain into thinking we are tasting that flavor. A large majority (most studies show around 80%) of what we perceive as taste is mostly coming from our olfactory receptors—our noses! So, even if the aromatic oils don’t affect our taste buds directly, we are left with a hint of flavor to make our cup of coffee unique.

Lucky Goat Flavored Coffees 

We make the seasonal and signature flavors at Lucky Goat by mixing a variety of single-noted flavors in unique ratios. What comes from this process is a long list of flavor combinations that get offered at different times of the year. Our year-round, signature flavors are Southern Pecan and Goat Tracks, and they will remain on the retail shelves and online year-round. Southern Pecan is a sweet and nutty pecan-flavored coffee, and Goat Tracks is an indulgent treat with notes of chocolate and caramel. Our seasonal offerings will include coconut and other flavors reminiscent of summer in the warm weather months, a classic pumpkin and cinnamon combination in the fall, and a lineup of holiday favorites for the November and December months.

Which Flavored Coffee is Right for Me? 

If you are excited about the prospect of sugar-free and allergen-free flavorings added to your coffee, the next challenge is choosing which one is right for you. A great place to start is by sampling the featured seasonal flavor in one of our cafes. These are available for eight weeks at a time as a hot brewed coffee and a cold brew beverage and can be sampled by simply asking your barista! The next step is to try one of our signature flavors, Southern Pecan or Goat Tracks. These are some of the most popular flavors and are most likely to be a crowd pleaser. Finally, if you find yourself in our café during the feature of our holiday-featured flavor, Snowflake Crunch, you’ll want to just stock up; it’s that good! Take our Coffee Quiz today to get matched up with your perfect flavored coffees. 

Once you get accustomed to our flavored coffee lineup, you can start experimenting with our flavors based on tastes you like in your everyday life—like hazelnut, vanilla, almond, and cherry—to decide which flavors to try next! Trying new flavored coffees is a great way to change up your coffee routine. Next time you are looking for something different, ask our baristas to get you a sample!