"First, we need to define what caramel is, which is easy: It's the result of the chemical reaction that occurs when sugar is heated to a particular temperature. It's strategically burned, aka caramelized, sugar. So how the heck could a caramel flavor be unsweetened? Unsurprisingly, what pours out of the Nutpods carton feels like a bit of a betrayal. Other common creamer flavors, such as vanilla or hazelnut, register to us as just fine, aroma-first additions to coffee that represent the flavor printed on the packaging."
"As sugar is heated and caramel formed, its molecules break apart and recombine to form something newer, better, stickier (think caramel sauce). The chemical compounds created give us the toasty, buttery and slightly browned-bitter caramel notes we all know and love. They are inseparable from the sweetness, because they are just different forms of sugar itself. You actually can extract and even synthesize them with a chemistry lab."
The Nutpods almond and coconut unsweetened caramel creamer performed poorly due to conceptual mismatch rather than texture or coffee performance. The Sweet Crème variant blended well and balanced coffee bitterness. Caramel is created by heating sugar, producing caramelized compounds intrinsically tied to sweetness, so an unsweetened caramel flavor is contradictory. Common flavors like vanilla and hazelnut function as aroma-first additions, but the unsweetened caramel tasted ersatz and insubstantial. Caramelization produces toasty, buttery, browned-bitter notes that are chemically related to sugar. Those compounds can be extracted or synthesized and are used in products from candles to vape juice and body spray.
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