Erin (the author) drinking her iced latte while writing her article.
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.