Especially in winter, hot drinks have a special appeal after skiing or shoveling or when the heating system is on the fritz. And sometimes just for the pleasure of it.
In areas without easy access to safe drinking water, many people prefer to boil all water. Having a hot drink can be a convenient excuse to boil water before drinking it.
Here, for your consideration, are hot drinks galore, from the routine, tried and true to the truly exotic.
Water-Based Drinks
I have a friend who drinks plain hot water, but she is surely in the minority. Putting aside coffee and tea for separate consideration, here are a few ideas for variations on hot water that don’t even need recipes.
- Simple additives like a squeeze of lemon, a little sugar, molasses or honey, or some other favorite flavoring such as vanilla, blackberry syrup, etc.
- Consider heating un-carbonated flavored water.
- Herbs, spices, and supplements can make for a very refreshing and sometimes medicinal beverage when mixed with hot water.
- And then there is herbal “tea,” made with water and anything other than Camellia sinensis or Camellia taliensis leaves, such as rooibos, chamomile, or peppermint. This is very convenient, given that there are many varieties commercially available.
- Broths and bouillons: water heated with cubes or paste flavored as vegetable, chicken, beef, or whatever.
Coffee-Based Drinks
Coffee isn’t singular. There are over a hundred different types of coffee plants, but only four main types of coffee beans that are commercially produced: Arabica, Robusta, Liberica, and Excelsa. Arabica and Robusta beans are the most popular, making up well over 90% of the market.
The first consideration is black or with various additives. Popular additions include milk of whatever sort, cream, creamer, whipped cream, ice cream, condensed milk, evaporated milk, butter, sugar, sugar substitutes, flavored syrups, or other sweeteners.
A thorough examination of coffee-based drinks is clearly beyond my purpose here. Suffice it to say, the Folgers website alone lists the following:
- Espresso, 7 versions
- Espresso with coffee, 4 more versions
- Cappuccino
- Mocha
- Lattes, 2 versions
- Breve
- Macchiatos, 2 versions
- Cortado
- Dirty Chai
- Dalgona
- Dessert Coffees, 5 versions
- Turkish Coffee
- Cuban Coffee
- Galão Coffee
- Antoccino Coffee
Hot Tea
And then there is real tea, made of leaves from the Camellia plant. Aside from water, tea is the most consumed beverage in the world. There are roughly 1500 types of tea, categorized into a few main types:
- Black tea, a fully oxidized tea that can be dark amber to black in color. Some types of black tea include Assam, Darjeeling, Ceylon, and Pue Yunnan.
- White tea, a naturally oxidized, non-processed tea that has a floral and fruity aroma. Some types of white tea include Pai Mu Tan and Yin Zhen.
- Green tea, a tea that is minimally oxidized to retain its natural green color and fresh flavor. Green tea may have health benefits such as boosting heart health and lowering cholesterol.
- Oolong tea, a distinct tea varietal native to Taiwan and Fujian province in China, has properties somewhere between green and black tea. It is a semi-oxidized tea, best steeped for 2–3 minutes at a temperature of 195°F.
- Pu-Erh tea gets its smoky, earthy flavor from extended fermentation. After drying in the sun, pu-erh leaves are rolled into a pile and left to ferment for several months, then steamed, compressed, and dried again.
At Oh, How Civilized!, tea and coffee sommelier Jee Choe has provided recipes for a number of hot drinks. Some of these are not tea, in the strict sense, but they don’t clearly fit anywhere else in this blog.
- Ginger spice
- Pumpkin spice chai latte
- Hot citron tea
- Decadent chai latte
- Easy chamomile tea latte
- London Fog (Earl Grey tea latte)
- Decadent hojicha latte
- Matcha hot chocolate
- Decadent Earl Grey hot chocolate
- Easy matcha latte (using green tea powder)
- Chocolate mint tea latte
- Milk tea
- Rooibos tea latte (this “red tea” is a South African herb)
- Quick and easy Moroccan mint tea
- Jujube ginger tea (jujube is a Chinese red date)
Juice-Based Hot Drinks
At its simplest, just heat your favorite juice, such as orange, apple, prune, or whatever.
Hot lemonade (hot water with honey and a bit of lemon) has been a common treatment for sore throats and stuffy heads for centuries.
Hot apple juice is not terribly popular, but its unpasteurized and unfiltered cousin, apple cider, is a very popular hot drink in the fall and winter.
Simply mixing boiling water with a bit of fruit preserves or compote makes a type of hot juice drink, warming and mildly sweet.
Or fancy it up a bit, for example, tomato juice with a dash of Worcestershire, or prune heated with a bit of lemon peel.
Milk-Based Hot Drinks
While some drinks already mentioned might arguably be lumped in with “milk-based” hot drinks, the ones that follow are undoubtedly so.
There is the classic, pure cup of hot (dairy) milk, especially appropriate for nighttime because it contains tryptophan. The brain uses this essential amino-acid to build both serotonin and melatonin, compounds that help us relax and prepare for sleep. Although the amount of tryptophan is small, don’t discount placebo effects, plus the effects of warmth and a full stomach!

Now there are numerous non-dairy milks available: soy, oat, almond, cashew, macadamia, pea, quinoa, rice, and maybe others I don’t know about. Consider these alone or in the options listed below.
You can find the following recipes at Through the Fibro Fog:
- Honey ginger warm milk
- Turkish salep drink
- Cardamom milk
- Nutmeg milk
- Spiced milk
- Turmeric latte
- Golden turmeric milk
- Plus 2 recipes for steamers and 2 for sweet drinks
Looking farther afield, you can find recipes like hot spiced vanilla custard milk (at The Peasant’s Daughter).
Hot Cocoa and Chocolate
Last but not least, hot chocolate and hot cocoa!
Last because you probably thought of it immediately; not least because it’s such a favorite. The basic questions are, with or without marshmallows, with or without a sprinkle of chocolate or cinnamon on top. Beyond that, what are your favorite flavorings? Peppermint? Maple?
Hot cocoa and hot chocolate are technically two different drinks! Mixing hot water or milk with cocoa powder and sugar will give you hot cocoa, which is what most of us in America think of. However, melting solid chocolate and mixing it with hot milk will give you hot chocolate, a thicker and richer beverage.
If you need a recipe, consult any cocoa tin, any comprehensive cookbook, or go online. Or, for a very simple recipe, you could just heat pre-made chocolate milk.
Try Mexican hot chocolate, with cinnamon and chili powder. Or, for a French variation, melt chocolate with cream until it is barely liquid enough to drink.
For a lighter take on hot chocolate, consider steeping cacao husks. Martha Washington reportedly enjoyed an infusion of roasted cacao husks with her breakfast!
Hot Alcoholic Drinks
Here again, recipes are everywhere in cookbooks and online. And you might note overlap with some of the preceding categories!
Hot toddy is a wintertime favorite. The classic hot toddy is made with hot water, sweeteners like honey or sugar, whiskey (often bourbon), and a stick of cinnamon or star anise.
Another popular wintertime drink is mulled wine. Mulled wine is dry red or white wine heated and spiced with cloves, star anise, and cinnamon sticks, often with oranges.
Because of the lack of pasteurization, apple cider and perry (cider made from pear juice) ferment and become alcoholic very easily. Hot Buttered Spiked Cider, besides the title ingredients, uses dark brown sugar, pumpkin pie spice, rum, orange peel, and cinnamon stick.
- Spiked hot chocolate or a hot peppermint patty
- Bailey’s hot chocolate
- Amaretto coffee
- Irish coffee
- Spanish coffee
- Hot buttered rum
- Ginger bourbon
- Cinnamon and tequila
- Apple brandy hot toddy
- Whiskey chai
- Gaelic punch, using young Irish whiskey
- Sake
Bottom Line: There are myriad ways to drink yourself warm from the inside out, not to mention warming your fingers as well. Go for it!
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