Erin (the author) drinking her iced latte while writing her article.
The coffee shop in Roanoke, Virginia where Erin (the author) got her favorite chai drink.
As I sit here figuring out what to write for my monthly OpEd, I am drinking my all time favorite coffee drink. An iced latte with one pump of lavender syrup. Now this drink isn’t for the faint hearted. You have to love a good iced drink with a twist. The floral notes in the lavender bring out the coffee flavor. Whenever I’m feeling spicy though, I add an extra pump of vanilla syrup to it. This gives it an extra sweetness and adds the complexity of the overall drink. I can thank a high school youth mission trip to Asheville for helping me find my drink, where a friend taught me this amazing combination of flavors.
Sometimes I’m just not in the mood for a cold drink though. In these situations, my favorite go-to drinks are the classic flat white (which has a better overall coffee flavor than the original latte) or a dirty chai latte. A flat white is easy, hard to mess up, and perfect for a cold day. The problem with a dirty chai latte is finding a good one. Chain coffee shops like Starbucks and Dunkin make their chai too sweet and the sugariness overwhelms the spices in the chai. I find that when you have a good dirty chai, the espresso, spices, and sweetness all balance each other out to create the perfect drink to warm you from the inside out. The best dirty chai I ever had was over spring break while I was road-tripping with my mom. We found it at a small coffee shop called Roasters Next Door Coffee Lounge.
Now there are some coffee drinks I personally avoid. I mainly try to avoid overly sweet drinks. I am also not a fan of black coffee due to how I grew up drinking it. My all time classic coffee I will always be drinking is drip coffee made at home by my parents. It’s perfectly okay tasting and gives me the caffeine I need. Haters will say I’m addicted, but I say I just need it to survive.
