With crisp temperatures, falling leaves and warmer clothes, cold coffee drinkers start transitioning to hot coffee. It can be time to leave behind iced coffee with its extra fixings like foam and sugary or syrupy flavoring. Many people switch to darker roasts and black coffee too. When you wish you could stay in the warmth of bed or home instead of trudging to the car, black coffee can better prepare for the day to come.
Many coffee lovers replace cold brews with richer coffee that tastes great without as much doctoring. People who return to black or nearly black coffee in the fall should delight in rich-tasting brews. Black, poor-quality coffee can make you feel like a cowboy alone in the middle of nowhere. Or worse, that you’re waiting on the ripped pleather couch at the car mechanic! No, in the winter, you want to brew a coffee with a rich aroma that invites you to bold flavor.
Reasons to Relish Hot Coffee
Hot coffee makes your body feel warmer. Not just warmer, but relief and maybe even happiness are commonly noted feelings. Notice that to start, we said “feel warmer.” While we may perceive that our body temperature rises, and sometimes it does, human body temperature changes are actually more complex. Since water comprises such a large portion of the human body, a cup or two of hot coffee doesn’t tip the scale much. Hot liquids can activate a cooling response in your body. It’s not unlike how Mexicans eat spicy foods to cool them down. Regardless of whether there’s an actual rise in temperature, when you’re cold and need to get your morning going, or to power through cold outdoor temperatures for work or pleasure, hot coffee does the job psychologically. You feel warmer and more able to push onward.
Hot coffee not only warms us up physically, but it makes us feel warmer towards others. If you regularly face people, note your coffee temperature. This study published in 2009 found:
“participants who briefly held a cup of hot (versus iced) coffee judged a target person as having a ‘warmer’ personality (generous, caring).”
In a second version of the study, warmth induced them to give a present to a friend instead of keeping it for themselves. The participants didn’t even notice the influence of warmth. If you’re in sales, customer service, a helping profession or another position relying on socialization, perhaps hot coffee can make you both more agreeable. You may even find hot coffee greases the wheels and makes you more successful—or at least it revs up your gift of gab!
Health Benefits of Black Coffee
Actually, not only does coffee have a few possible health benefits, but drinking black coffee is good for our health. However, it’s best not to drink it first thing in the morning without much else in the stomach. Mid-morning is better, like after 10 a.m. Black coffee packs antioxidants. These can prevent cancer caused by free radicals. It can also help remove toxins and bacteria from the stomach.
However, don’t think that switching to dark roast coffee will give you an extra bump of caffeine. Dark roast coffee actually has less caffeine per bean than light roast coffee. If you’re going to add less cream, a light roast might do the trick. It adds slightly more caffeine and a lighter taste (like accessorized cold coffee) without extra calories. In fact, it may help you burn more calories if you don’t stay stationary.
Having Fun with Hot Coffee
While it may seem that cold coffee has most of the fun, and indeed iced lattes and cold-foam concoctions can taste more like dessert, hot coffee can taste great too. It brings its own opportunities for fun. To make a great peppermint mocha coffee at home, or a gingerbread spiced latte, check out our holiday coffee recipes. Our peppermint mocha combines refreshing peppermint and decadent mocha flavors. There is an easy pumpkin spice latte recipe as well!
However, when we’re talking about fun per ounce, Irish Coffees and other liqueurs can really deliver. We have a recipe for that too! A touch of alcohol may help mellow you in the face of political tension everyone swore wouldn’t crop up at the holiday dinner table. For alternative conversation starters and topics right after the feast, or on the morning of Black Friday or December 26th, you can evoke the best of a coffee shop for your guests. By replicating a shop’s coffee gear, machines, coffee mugs and plates, and maybe coffee-shop décor for your breakfast nook or kitchen, you can steer conversations to safer topics! The art and magazines coffee shops often display will help you change the course of conversation too.
Better, Purer Coffee
When switching to purer coffee for the cool weather, choosing a single-origin coffee can deliver the purity we crave—or should crave. Coffee can contain pesticides, mold and other toxins. A beverage drank daily (or twice or thrice daily) should be non-GMO and not grown and processed with shortcuts. Sun-grown coffee is usually treated with more pesticides to compensate for the plant not being in its proper surroundings. When the temperature drops, enjoying the warmth, taste and peace of mind that comes from a rich, safe, hot coffee is key.
Subida: A Coffee that Wins
For sustainable, safe, gourmet coffee to power you through the cold months, choosing a hearty single origin can hit most bases. When combining taste and sustainability, the only better factor to add to the mix is a great cause. 100% of Subida Coffee Co.’s sales benefit a non-profit in the mountains of Honduras. Sales help educate teenage boys who attend school on the property where the coffee is grown. In Santa Rosa de Copán, Honduras, The Moses Project improves the community in several ways, the least of which is with the taste of its delicious coffee. Inside and outside of Honduras, Copan Coffee is bold and interesting.
Subida’s coffee sales help the community by educating the next generation of Hondurans. They also foster their development. Instead of having to stop their education to work or stay home, they receive exposure to possible professions, in addition to their education. Between farming, aquaculture, entrepreneurship, trade, biology, ecology and marketing, different combinations of this exposure spark student interest. Some students are inspired to work to give back to the community and help others do the same through a helping profession.
This is what Subida Coffee Co. models for other agricultural entities to replicate: a win-win-win-win for the environment, the workers, the customers and the community. In fact, last year Subida Coffee Co. received Rain Forest Alliance certification, which ratifies their commitment to the Alliance’s three pillars of sustainability. Coffee from Honduras is making waves for more than just the huge volumes grown—it’s the taste and great work behind the bags and pods of coffee.
