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It is said that flavoured syrups are the coffee bean’s best friend. Good syrup adds wonderful texture and depth to your drink so this is hard to deny. With such an incredible range of available flavours out there, you can be as creative as you like.  But it’s not just coffee, they can be added to tea too. A couple of dashes of fruity syrups, some brewed tea and a slug of ice and you have yourself a Tropical Breeze iced tea.

And why stop there? Flavoured syrups can be used in some many ways.

In Italy, pavement cafes keep carbonated soda water behind their polished bars. Customers like to sit and watch the world go by without resorting to endless alcoholic sustenance. Instead the barista creates delicious light mocktails adding one or two syrups to the soda. Some more adventurous ones add a splash of lime syrup to light beers and in some countries it has been know for bars to serve beer with strawberry syrup!

For children, flavoured syrups are excellent slush or granite bases. On a scorching summer’s day there is nothing better. So keeping some in the cupboard ensures you can knock one up in no time. Grab your ice cubes from the freezer, wrap them in a clean drying-up cloth and crush with bottom of a sturdy mug or glass (or, if the mood takes you, a small hammer). Put the crushed ice in a tall cup and pour your chosen syrup(s) over. In goes a straw and outside they go.

If you are a bit of a purist when it comes to tea and coffee, then consider making a frappe°.  What’s a frappe°? Well it depends where you are in the world. It could be a frozen coffee drink, a fruit drink with shaved ice, or an ice cold milkshake. In the UK, it tends to be the latter. It always involves being cold, usually with ice and is always refreshing, especially when the sun is out.

Of course, flavoured syrups don’t just work with drinks. They make wonderful, dessert sauces. Chocolate or caramel syrups are fabulous when poured over cold ice cream sundaes or drizzled over pancakes and waffles.  Even a plate of fruit can benefit from a few drops of sweet syrup. Syrups can also be used to intensify the flavour of cake, muffin and pudding recipes. 

It would be a mistake to think only sweet syrups have a place in the kitchen. Spicy syrups like ginger provide piquant marinades for salads, cold meats and fish.

So, you don’t need to be a culinary expert to incorporate syrups into your drinking and eating habits. Instead let your imagination run riot (or, if you are feeling a little nervous, download some recipes from the Internet). The possibilities are endless and with such fantastic flavours to choose from you can’t go wrong.

If you had suggested to someone a few years ago that they should add syrup to their coffee they would have looked at you blankly and wondered what on earth you were talking about. The closest people came to syrup was probably a tin of golden or even black treacle in the kitchen cupboard!

Syrup in coffee was something a few people on the Continent indulged in when they had the time to sit outside their favourite café or bar, putting the world to rights with their companions and asking the barista to “just add a shot of vanilla”, or perhaps amaretto, to their espresso to give it a bit of a twist.

But not any more. Because if you haven’t heard of coffee syrups then you really are in the minority, and missing out.

Even here in the UK, where we can be a bit slow to embrace new culinary ideas from abroad, the idea of adding syrup to coffee is becoming more and more popular.

Coffee shops – both chains and independents – are taking advantage of this new popularity and stocking a wide range of flavours. They have realised that people want to add a dash of something new to their espresso, they want to liven up their latte, makeover their macchiato, and ring the changes with their cappuccino.

For coffee shops, it makes commercial sense. Each bottle of syrup contains a number of shots, the cost of which can be passed on to the customer with a small mark-up. A slight increase in price for the customer, but a big profit for the coffee shop.

For coffee lovers, syrups really ring the changes and add a new interest and more choice for both the coffee aficionado and the occasional coffee drinker alike. And they make only a small difference in price to your usual drink.

So, where did the practice of adding syrup to coffee come from? It is thought to have started as a syrup flavoured with actual coffee, and originated from New England. It was created in the 1930s, when drug stores started mixing leftover coffee grounds with sugar and milk, and marketing the drink at children, whose parents were in the store having ‘proper’ coffee. Bit different to a cola with a straw!

Some coffee shops in the States also started making simple sugar syrups, by dissolving sugar in water, then using the syrup as a coffee sweetener.

At some point, someone thought of bottling this syrup and it was marketed.

But all this was a far cry from the syrups we enjoy nowadays, with their very wide range of flavours – vanilla, cinnamon, amaretto, ginger, and caramel to name but a few.

You can add them to coffee in your local coffee shop, you can enjoy them at home, and they are so versatile you can even use them in cooking.

There are different types of addiction, and as far as medical science is concerned, none of them are good. If you’re an addict, you can either be addicted to smoking, drinking or even using drugs. But what is addiction, really? The Merriam – Webster Dictionary defined addiction as the “persistent compulsive use of a substance known by the user to be harmful”. Addiction is a clinical disorder. Shall we then consider the persistent and compulsive drinking of coffee an addiction? To all coffee lovers, rest assured that it is not an addiction, nor is it a clinical disorder, and it is not detrimental.

Today, coffee is one of the widely known and drank beverages in the world. In early societies, coffee was part of religious rites and ceremonies, making it sacred and its consumption limited to important people only. In the latter days, coffee even became part of political activities. At present, coffee is an important good widely exported throughout the world. It is actually counted as the seventh largest agricultural product, in value.

There is more to coffee that meets the eye, or rather the nose and the tongue. Before we are able to serve, inhale the aroma and drink it, where did the product come from? The beverage was actually a result of several processes. It is not as if the coffee we drink can just be picked from the tree. Coffee berries, contrary to what many think, actually tastes sweet when ripe. These berries are removed of their fleshy part and the beans are fermented. They are then washed to remove dirt and then dried. The next step is the roasting of the beans. This is an important step owing to the fact that how the coffee is roasted affects the taste when brewed. Short roasting time results in a bitter, stronger flavor and more aromatic essence.

Even in everyday life, coffee has been a part of most people’s lifestyle. Much like ancient times, coffee now serves like a personal religion. It is a part of the morning ritual in starting the day. Taking a sip of the warm exquisite drink heightens the mood and helps the person feel wide awake. Of course, we must give the credit to the essential ingredient of coffee which is caffeine. During social gatherings or business meetings, people tend to lighten up and ease the tension away with the help of the mere presence of coffee. It seems like a magical beverage! Even at simple friendly get-togethers, people talk “over a cup of coffee”.

Walk around the plaza and you won’t miss a coffee shop. Coffee is no longer a fad, but became a necessity for people all over the world! More and more people feel the need to utilize the wonderful flavor of coffee. It is not surprising, therefore, to find out that there are actually more than a hundred coffee combinations around the world. Among the hundred others, however, we have the top five most popular varieties: espresso, café latte, café mocha, cappuccino, and of course, the instant coffee.

Espresso is not a coffee combination, for it is actually the pure coffee, which is in fine powder form, subjected to hot (not boiling) water under high pressure. It has a thicker and denser liquid compared to the usual brewed coffee and it is measured in shots when served. It functions as a main component in coffee combinations.

Café latte literally means coffee with milk. Latte is the Italian word for milk, so if you order latte in an Italian coffee shop, you will most likely be served just a glass of milk and not the usual cafe latte you are expecting. This beverage is composed of one third part espresso and two thirds milk. It is served with a thick layer of foamed milk, usually a third or a fourth of an inch thick.

Café mocha is almost the same as café latte, only instead of the thick foamed milk, chocolate syrup or powder is added. Likewise, cappuccino is a combination much the same as café latte, only having a thinner layer of foamed milk on top.

But who would ever forget the most popular type of coffee served? Instant coffee is something that you would see in every two households out of three. No wonder coffee is one of the most popular drinks ever!

Before there are Starbucks, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaves, most people in the region of Singapore and Malaysia know only kopi, a Baba Malay language for coffee.  Kopi is basically robusta coffee.  Espresso and cappuccino are extravagant coffee in the early days, meant for the rich, and only available in hotels.

Today, a cup of espresso coffee or any other gourmet coffee still costs a few dollars, and a cup of kopi is only between 70 and 90 Singapore cents.

Latte or long black is unknown in local coffee stalls and kopi tiam.  Tiam means shop in Hokkien, a Chinese dialect.  Instead it is commonly called kopi, kopi-o, and kopi-c.

Kopi is not brewed in coffee maker, but steep in a tall metal pot with a long spout with a cotton coffee filter, a long cone bag, within.  Milk and sugar are not served separately on the table.  When you order your kopi, you have coffee with condensed milk, a sweetener, and sugar, already added.

Kopi-o is black coffee, with sugar added.  O sounds like black in Hokkien.

Instead of condensed milk, Carnation evaporated milk is added to kopi-c, with sugar.  The c stands for Carnation, a brand, even though some have replaced it with other brands.

Most of the early kopi tiam are started by Chinese who are Hainanese.  Today their lingo still stays.  Ask for kopi-c siu tai, it is coffee with evaporated milk and less sugar in the cup.  More sugar, ka tai.  But for no sugar, it is kosong, a Malay word which means nothing.

Sarabat stalls are coffee stalls run by Indians and Malays.  They are famous for their teh tarik.  Teh means tea, and tarik means pull back.  A cup of tea with milk and sugar added is then juggled between two cups at an altitude.  The original purpose is to lower the temperature of very hot tea for easy drinking on a hot day, for the climate in Singapore and Malaysia most of the year is of summer.  However, the action has also produced a foamy top for the tea, much like cappuccino.  This spurs the creation of kopiccino, using the same method but instead of tea, it is coffee.

Many migrants came from China in the old days.  Chinese meal will always have a cup of Chinese tea besides their food.  It is not surprising to find in the local coffee shop and food court, too, that coffee and tea are usually ordered together with meals, much like having a cup of Chinese tea, or ice water in western meal.  But for some, hot kopi is still best reserved after a meal.

Nevertheless, for those who still crave for a piece of cheese cake with gourmet coffee, it is still Starbucks, hotels, or café.  For others with a budget, Ikea offers value for money for a cup of brewed coffee with cheese cake.

Any opportunities to travel to Singapore and Malaysia, kopi with roti kaya is a must.  Roti is bread in Malay, and kaya is a coconut egg jam.