Mix Lime Juice Into Your Iced Coffee For A Unexpectedly Refreshing Sip

Maybe you like your iced coffee with just a splash of milk. Maybe you like it with four spoonfuls of sugar and a healthy pour of flavored creamer. Whatever your preference, you may not have thought about putting lime juice in it. Adding citrus to your iced coffee might sound off-putting, but it's actually refreshing.

While mixing citrus juice with your iced coffee has become a relatively recent trend, it has evolved from what invading French soldiers were doing in the 1830s and 1840s while being held prisoner in Algeria. They didn't have access to many resources for their cups of joe but found refreshment by adding cold water. Some historians believe that this Mazagran-style coffee (named after the fortress where they were held) was the original iced coffee. Later, the drink became popular in French coffee shops and bars where it was served with ice and lemon, like the modern lemonade coffee trend.

Making your iced coffee Mazagran-style with lime juice is a similar principle, just squeeze some of the fresh fruit into your cup. Along with creating a refreshing drink, especially during the summer, it reduces the bitterness of espresso and poorly roasted coffee beans. You can add a splash of creamer for sweetness, but be careful about which type you add. Regular coffee creamer and milk are likely to curdle because of the lime's extra acidity. Sweetened condensed milk is a better option because its chemical profile is different, and you can use it to make corn milk for your coffee for a different flavor. Various milk alternatives, such as oat milk, also work well.

Lime juice is just one of the ingredients that make iced coffee even more refreshing. The combination of pineapple and coffee, for instance, works a lot like other citrus blends because of the acidic factor. It also has the benefit of giving your brew some natural sweetness, and using a wedge for garnish makes your cup look fancy, too.

Citrus isn't the only flavor that can upgrade your iced coffee, though. While it has been around since the 9th century, butter coffee isn't something that sounds good to everyone but has become popular for boosting energy and focus. It's actually similar to Bulletproof Coffee, a brand developed with special coffee beans and unsalted, grass-fed butter. Putting mayo in coffee is another unusual option and, again, similar because the high-fat content also makes the drink creamy and flavor-rich. To mix butter or mayonnaise smoothly into your iced coffee, add it to the brew before you pour it over ice.

If you want to take your iced coffee into blended frappe territory, cottage cheese is the key to making it creamy. In addition to improving the texture, using this ingredient as an alternative to milk boosts the protein content of your frozen beverage.