The Benefits and Effects of Adding Honey to Coffee: Can You Mix Honey with Coffee?

When it comes to coffee companions, everyone has their own preferences. Mild and easily accessible ingredients like sugar, milk, condensed milk, and cream have always been the go-to choices for daily consumption.

Yet whenever people are asked whether coffee can be mixed with honey, whether it tastes good when added, or if there are any potential harms, they immediately show a puzzled expression, then quietly turn to search engines for answers, only to end up with conflicting opinions. At a loss, they don't know whose advice to follow. Today, FrontStreet Coffee is here to specifically discuss honey, this controversial coffee companion～

Can coffee be mixed with honey?

Actually, adding honey to coffee is a very ancient way of drinking it, with a history spanning several hundred years. For example, in FrontStreet Coffee's article "Vienna Coffee, It Seems to Have Changed!!!", the origin story of cappuccino features honey:

The timeline can be traced back to 1684, when the Polishman Kulczyki was rewarded with a generous bounty for successfully relieving the Siege of Vienna, along with large quantities of coffee beans left behind after the Turkish defeat. Thus, after the war, he remained in Vienna and opened a Blue Bottle Coffee House. To cater to Austrian tastes, he thought of using a cloth bag to filter out the difficult-to-drink powder residue from Turkish coffee, and added cream, honey, and spices to enrich the flavor. This way of drinking quickly became the favorite of Viennese people.

As a natural sweetener, honey has long been used to add sweetness and aroma to food. Modern research suggests that honey contains about 70% glucose and fructose, as well as proteins, inorganic salts, organic acids, and other substances. Therefore, it is not only nutritious but also has excellent therapeutic and auxiliary effects. So for the question of whether coffee can be mixed with honey, the answer is clearly affirmative.

How should honey be added to coffee for the best taste?

Compared to seasonings like sugar, besides being sweet, honey has its own unique aroma. It tastes light, sweet, and mellow, and high-quality honey also emits elegant floral notes. Therefore, when we use honey instead of sugar in coffee, not only can we increase sweetness, but if used appropriately, it might even create a completely new complex flavor profile when combined with coffee.

FrontStreet Coffee learned from family elders that the water temperature for brewing honey is also very particular, because excessively high temperatures can destroy heat-unstable nutrients in honey such as enzymes, vitamins, and polyphenols. Moreover, scalding temperatures can make honey sour, resulting in poor taste. Currently, mainstream research suggests that brewing honey with water below 60°C can avoid the loss of these heat-unstable nutrients, with water temperatures between 40-55°C being optimal.

Black coffees like pour-over or hang-ear type are typically brewed with hot water close to 90°C. Usually, the coffee temperature when received falls between 65-75°C or even higher. Therefore, to avoid producing unpleasant flavors, we might as well wait for it to cool slightly before adding an appropriate amount of homemade honey according to taste.

For example, today FrontStreet Coffee let the brewed Brazil Queen Estate sit indoors for 6-8 minutes before adding 2 small spoons of honey and stirring. After waiting for complete dissolution and tasting, the coffee was not too hot for the mouth, while carrying a honey fragrance and sweetness, very pleasant.

If you want to add honey to lattes/cappuccinos/flat whites, then we need to pay attention to the amount used, because too little will be easily masked by the coffee flavor, while too much may make the milk coffee overly sweet. In this regard, FrontStreet Coffee tried multiple parameters and found that controlling the ratio of honey to coffee liquid at 1:2 works best, meaning 1 part honey to 2 parts espresso.

For example, FrontStreet Coffee here uses oat milk to make cappuccino paired with honey, first extracting 40g of coffee liquid with 20g of Warm Sun coffee powder;

Then pour 180ml of oat milk and 20g of honey into the milk pitcher in sequence, and froth into a fluffy, thick milk foam, with temperature controlled at 50-55°C suitable for direct drinking;

Finally, combine the two, and the honey oat cappuccino is ready～

Important Notice :

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