Why You Should Avoid Hazelnut Coffee Beans

Written by: Garrett Oden

Why You Should Avoid Hazelnut Coffee Beans

Hazelnut coffee is nothing new to most coffee drinkers. It’s affordable, widely available, and has that intense sweet and nutty flavor. For many of us, it may even have been our ‘gateway’ beverage into the coffee world. It’s no wonder why it is so wildly popular. 

However, hazelnut and other flavored coffees aren’t all they seem to be.

While they may have that desirable monotonous, sweet taste to them, there are a whole host of chemicals, cheap labor costs, and age old beans lurking behind that shiny exterior. 

Hazelnut coffee is flavored by adding natural or synthetic oils to (usually) low quality coffee beans. The coffee is seen to be low grade when it is harshly affected by many defects or has been left to age for a significant amount of time, sometimes months or even years! The beans are sprayed down with the flavoring oils quite soon after roasting and before being bagged up and shipped off.

Read: Three Reasons to Avoid Artificially Flavored Coffee

The oil is also likely to leave some stubborn sticky residue all over your beloved coffee grinder, which can be a huge hassle to scrub away. No thanks!

In this article we will go over some reasons on why you should avoid buying and drinking hazelnut flavored coffee. For instance, did you know.. 

  • You are likely sacrificing bean quality when choosing hazelnut coffee
  • Cheap, Hazelnut Coffee is not sustainable and hurts farmers’ livelihoods 
  • The ability to make delicious and naturally nutty coffee has never been easier! 

Want to find out more? Read ahead!

You Are Likely Sacrificing Bean Quality When Choosing Hazelnut Coffee

When you are focusing on one strong flavor, you don’t really need to be fussed about what is masked behind it. Anything to make the medicine go down.

It’s unlikely a roastery that douses their coffee in strong flavor oils will purchase the best beans they can find.

They will source the coffee that nobody else wants.  It could be the beans that have been afflicted with defects, which leave them tasting like potato stew or are harshly bitter, or the dusty old beans left in the back of the shipping hanger for who knows how long. 

And in the long run, it hurts the farmers and their communities.

flavored hazelnut coffee

Read: How much should you pay for coffee beans?

Cheap Hazelnut Coffee Is Not Sustainable and Hurts Farmers’ Livelihoods 

While cheap flavored coffee might be good for your wallet now, the small price comes with big consequences.

Hazelnut and other flavored coffees regularly use cheap, defective, and low grade coffee as their base. And unfortunately, cheap coffee means the original farmers will not receive a substantial return for their hard work. They can’t use much of the little they have to adapt, improve, and grow their farms or their lives. 

According to the International Coffee Organization, approximately 125 million people around the world depend on coffee for their livelihood. To this day, it is one of the most valuable and widely traded crops in history. 

Read: 3 Reasons Buying Cheap Coffee Is Bad For The World

The consequences of cheap crops mean many farmers move away from coffee. According to the International Coffee Association, when “farmers depend largely on coffee for income, including food purchase and where indebtedness has been incurred, farmers are either more heavily in debt or have been forced to abandon their farms or switch to alternative crops.”

In the Specialty Coffee Association paper Food Security and Coffee: Ending Seasonal HungerFarmers are often pressured to make difficult decisions about how to allocate their coffee income between shelter, food, and the farm investments required for the next year’s harvest.” 

Many of these farmers may have outstanding debt, healthcare bills, and struggling with their children’s school expenses. Some may not be able to pay the coffee pickers who make sure the coffee crop is picked at the right stage of ripeness. 

The families have to stretch the little they have and that may mean missing many meals. And this situation happens every year as the seasons and harvests go on.  In extreme situations, “coffee producing families run out of savings and are forced to choose between food and shelter” says the SCA. 

For a closer look into the destructive nature of cheap coffee, check out this article

 

avoid flavored coffee beans

The Ability to Make Delicious and Naturally Nutty Specialty Coffee Has Never Been Easier

In recent years, the coffee industry and all its gadgets have advanced in leaps and bounds. It has never been easier to brew an excellent tasting espresso or pour over from natural, pure coffee beans! 

❓ Did you know you can enjoy coffee with scrumptious notes of hazelnut, chocolate, and caramel without any of the added chemicals?

These flavors organically occur in many crops of coffee and are only enhanced by some careful roasting and easy brewing. 

Read: How To: Learn To Taste Coffee!

You wouldn’t mix cola with a vintage barrel-aged whiskey, so why would you drink hazelnut coffee when the base product already has such delicious potential?

By purchasing sustainably sourced and traceable specialty coffee, you help those hard working farmers create growth and a better future for their families and the industry as a whole.