Generally speaking that stuff has chemicals added to give it the aroma of the adjunct flavor--not actual flavor--and they are bad for you.Freed Roger wrote:Sidenote- at C stores and lobby style coffee- that hazlenut stuff can smell good but always tastes like dung
There are a few ways to get some flavor into your coffee if you want. You can buy or make a syrup. If you want, say, hazelnut, you can make a simple syrup by boiling 1 part sugar and 1 part water til the sugar dissolves, then toss in a handful of hazelnuts and let it simmer real low for 20 minutes. Strain out the hazelnuts, bottle up the syrup and it will keep in the fridge for a few weeks. You can do this with anything. Vanilla, cherries, almonds, whatever.
If you don't want to add sugary stuff to your coffee you can use cocktail bitters. Most are alcohol-based, but Fee Brothers makes alcohol-free bitters and they're not very expensive. Anywhere from $7-12 a bottle and because they're highly concentrated they'll last a really long time. They have a lot of flavors, from barrel-aged old fashioned bitters to cardamom to orange to you name it. You can put as little as a drop or as much as a few heavy dashes into your coffee, based on your taste, and it will add a nice non-coffee flavor.
Another route is some kind of fat. My doc recommended this since I drink coffee in the morning but don't usually eat breakfast. Adding a bit of butter or coconut oil gives the coffee flavor and also, for guys over 40, gives us a bit of fat in the morning to jump-start our metabolism and help fight weight gain as our metabolisms slow.
