Does The Coffee Industry Really Want You To Put Turmeric In Your Espresso?

Gear Patrol—Hearst Magazines‘ “gathering place for guys who want to make the most of life”—are going hard on coffee coverage here in 2018, authoring authoritative-ish listicles on top roasters, SCA approved coffee brewing gear, coffee subscriptions, instant coffee, and much more. Yesterday’s feature—ostensibly about the SCA giving awards to turmeric latte blends—contains some curious advice as it originally appeared (emphasis added):

The mix — a blend of ground turmeric, ground ginger and natural orange flavoring — is organic and harbors no preservatives, artificial flavoring or artificial food dyes. Though it can be mixed with milk or water, or enjoyed as a standalone beverage, the brand and the SCA recommends a teaspoon or so tossed into a shot of espresso for a new take on an old drink.

This statement ran in an article titled “The Coffee Industry Wants You To Put Turmeric In Your Espresso“, which is quite a headline! The post has since been updated to reflect that the SCA does not, in fact, recommend any such practice (see below for an official statement on the matter). But that headline, which remains unchanged, sent us here at Sprudge down a profound path of ponderous wonderment. Does the coffee industry really want you to put turmeric in your espresso? Has anyone actually tried it? And who, exactly, is the *you* in this question? Is it the royal you, meaning all of us with the ability to drink espresso and peruse websites? Or is it a command for me, specifically?

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Who is you? Who am I? Maybe Gear Patrol is on to something. I would never deign to make such a claim on behalf of an entire industry, but what do I know? My abilities as a guy just making the most of life have long been questioned. Nevertheless we want to hear from you, dear Sprudge reader—both specifically from you and from the unwashed masses of the royal you—as we ask our readers to weigh in on this, the pressing coffee issue of our time.

**Does the coffee industry really want you to put turmeric in your espresso?**

Take our Twitter poll. Sound off in the comments below. We’ll update with our findings in the next 24 hours. In the meantime, below please find an official statement from SCA Communications Director Vicente Partida:

Thanks for getting in touch about the Gear Patrol article. The part of the copy that it made it sound like the SCA recommended that folks add turmeric to their espresso was an error that the writer at Gear Patrol has now corrected.

To clarify, Dona’s Turmeric Concentrate and Zuma’s Organic Turmeric Chai mix both won Best New Product in the Standalone Specialty Beverage category. Our BNP judges selected these products precisely for their attributes as standalone beverages and they were not judged as additives. We congratulate our friends at Dona and Beyond the Bean for winning the BNP awards at Expo and World of Coffee respectively.

Jordan Michelman is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Jordan Michelman on Sprudge.