Best Fruit Flavors that Go With Your Next Iced Latte

There is no doubt that coffee owes a lot of its popularity to its versatility.  Coffee can be enjoyed hot or cold; sweet or bitter.  Coffee can feature floral notes, nutty notes, and even fruit flavors, though fruit flavors are usually included heterogeneously in a way that is not intrinsic to the actual coffee.  Fruit-flavored coffee is usually created with fruit syrup.  As sugary as such a concoction may immediately seem, fruit-coffee combinations present a diverse set of flavor profiles for all food lovers to enjoy, though coffee lovers may be particularly fond of such a novel experience.  There are lots of fruits out there, so how can one know which fruit flavors complement coffee the best?  Well, since many floral notes are inherent to coffee, and fruits come from flowers, then how hard could it be to pair coffee with fruit?  Whether you enjoy regular coffee or concentrated coffee, sweet fruits and tart fruits will usually do the trick, but here are some specific examples.

1. Blueberry

Blueberries are already known to be good complements to beer because they are both tart and sweet.  The tartness of blueberries allows for their sweetness to play nice with complex bitter flavors.  Meanwhile, coffee is as bitter if not more bitter than many types of beer, so you may enjoy putting blueberry syrup in your latte instead of sugar.  Blueberry syrup may offer a less sweet alternative to sugar that many coffee purists might vehemently enjoy.  The first item on this list may ultimately be your favorite.

2. Pomegranate

While pomegranates are almost uniformly sweet, their general flavor profile is similar to that of blueberries: They are sweet and sour simultaneously, but the key difference between the two is that pomegranates are milder all-around. Pomegranates are drier than blueberries in a way that complements coffee.  Pomegranate syrup may also be an effective alternative to conventional sugar that offers a little more complexity and nuance.

3. Jackfruit

Jackfruits are exclusively grown in India, and they are generally sweeter than the aforementioned two, offering little beyond sweetness, but sometimes coffee can use a little sweetness, especially if either you have a sweet tooth or generally do not enjoy coffee.  If you would like to try a jackfruit before incorporating it into your coffee, then they are available in bags of freeze-dried slices, but they generally taste like mangoes, one of the best fruits on the planet.  It is hard to go wrong with jackfruit.  It just might supplant the actual flavor of the coffee.  Concentrated coffee might be a better contender for Jackfruit due to concentrated coffee’s incredible strength.

4. Mango

While mangoes offer sweetness, they also offer tang, which plays a bit nicer with coffee than a genuinely sour flavor.  Tang is essentially sour without the acidity, so the coffee carries all the acidity, and your coffee will not be too acidic.  If you are looking for a particularly fresh and juicy latte on a hot day, then you may enjoy drinking your coffee with mango syrup.  Like all syrups, mango syrup is a great, zesty, and flavorful alternative to genuine sugar or sugar substitutes.  The key difference between mango syrup and jackfruit syrup is that jackfruit syrup is more exclusively sweet, while mango syrup tends to be more complex.

5. Raspberry

While raspberries are sweet, they offer enough acidity for their sweetness and the bitterness of the coffee to get to know each other.  Raspberries are particularly delicious in and of themselves, while their red color should serve as a red flag as to how amazing they are.  Raspberries go great with coffee because the flavor profiles of both are more similar than different, so if you enjoy both simultaneously, then neither is getting in the way of the other, and you will be able to genuinely taste both.

6. Kiwi

Kiwi is the sourest fruit you can incorporate into an iced latte.  With a touch of sweetness, kiwis can really bring out and accentuate the acidity of a cup of coffee.  This type of syrup is only recommended for seasoned coffee drinkers who can really appreciate all the subtle notes of an individual cup of coffee.  Kiwi coffee is for the bloodhounds of the coffee world who can pick up on things like smokiness and floral notes.  It is not for the faint of heart, so do not say that this article did not warn you.

7. Strawberry

Strawberry coffee rests at a halfway point between raspberry and kiwi syrup.  Modern strawberries are not as sweet as raspberries, but they are not as sweet as kiwis either, so they are perfect for anyone who wants to test the waters with stronger, more complex flavors.  Whatever flavor you choose, know that any will yield a new and fun adventure.