Does Anyone Drink Hot Coffee Anymore?

[Gefn]

Even in the dead of winter, cold drinks account for 60 percent of Starbucks beverage sales. Is the hot cup of joe on its way out?

Hannah Maute’s obsession with iced lattes, iced coffees and cold brews began during her freshman year at Temple University, where she was surrounded by students who “looked cool” bouncing from class to class with a cup in hand. Now, not a day goes by when she isn’t sipping one herself.

“I genuinely think that I have accidentally, like, Pavlov-conditioned myself to associate an iced coffee with productivity,” she said on Wednesday.

Ms. Maute, 23, a full-time content creator in Manhattan who often shares her iced-coffee orders on YouTube, explained why she doesn’t go for hot coffee: It’s usually too hot to drink at first, then it’s drinkable for only a short period before turning lukewarm, at which point the taste is ruined. (“I cannot time it right,” she said. “I always get distracted.”)

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/style/iced-coffee-starbucks.html?searchResultPosition=5

[Gefn]

While this article was good and entertaining, I disagree . I’ve seen quite a few people at my local Starbucks, Dunkin and Wawa getting a real cup of Joe.

I think younger people are going for the iced stuff and older ones like hot coffee.

The iced stuff is too sweet to me, and I have a sweet tooth.

[Smokin Joe]

I love a good iced coffee, but that said, I drink Dark Sumatran, fresh ground, moderately hot if I can get it, but decades in the oil patch have conditioned me to drink it hot or cold (it often gets cold before I get a chance to drink it). Black, no pollutants, and it's still good.

It's the caffeine that gives the productivity boost, so long as you don''t overdo it.

[Kamaji]

If she's buying coffee from Starbucks, then it's not the temperature that makes it undrinkable, it's the fact that Starbucks uses cheap coffee.  What Starbucks makes its money on is selling all of those flavor additives, not the underlying coffee itself; and as such, it simply chooses to use cheap coffee as the base, and then hide the poor taste with flavor additives.

In NYC, the average street-corner coffee vendor sells better coffee than does Starbucks, and for a lot less, too.

[roamer_1]

I would draw everyone's attention to the fact that fancy coffees from huts do not begin to put a dent in real regular coffee offered everywhere for free in 30 gallon pots. I can go all morning, all over town, and never pay for a coffee once - though I might have to bring donuts somewhere.

[mountaineer]

If I want to put my finger on the pulse of America, Starbucks is the last place I'd go. And, yes, I drink hot coffee year 'round. I never, ever drink iced coffee.

[Smokin Joe]

I would draw everyone's attention to the fact that fancy coffees from huts do not begin to put a dent in real regular coffee offered everywhere for free in 30 gallon pots. I can go all morning, all over town, and never pay for a coffee once - though I might have to bring donuts somewhere.

There are a few places I can hit if I need a cup...most free.

[catfish1957]

America's drift to iced coffee instead of a good hot steaming cup, is just one more example of the "wussification" of America.

[Smokin Joe]

America's drift to iced coffee instead of a good hot steaming cup, is just one more example of the "wussification" of America.

Nah. For me, it just gets cold, but I drink it anyway. Never liked it scalding hot.

[mountaineer]

America's drift to iced coffee instead of a good hot steaming cup, is just one more example of the "wussification" of America.

Especially when doused in soy milk.

[libertybele]

I had my first and last cup of iced coffee when my kids were still in elementary school.  We went for a bicycle ride and stopped at a Circle K  for a drink.  I had heard all the rave about iced coffee and decided to try some.  Yuck!  Way to sweet.

I like my coffee hot, with just a splash of 1/2 & 1/2. No flavors or sugar. 

[Hoodat]

If you have to put cream and sugar in coffee, then you don't like coffee.

[Idiot]

I have a black cup of coffee every morning.  I refuse to pay $5 for a starbucks cup of coffee...

[catfish1957]

I have a black cup of coffee every morning.  I refuse to pay $5 for a starbucks cup of coffee...

I bought a cup from Starbucks at the Houston Galleria in 1985, by the ice rink.  It was $1.50 then, and I thought the cost was insane for the product you got.  They were a pretty tiny company then, and I laughed that I though they'd never make it.

And btw, that 1985 cup was my last visit.

Just shows I am not 100% on financial prognostication.

[roamer_1]

Nah. For me, it just gets cold, but I drink it anyway. Never liked it scalding hot.

That's almost true here too - other than I like it piping hot. It creates time. There is something in the ritual, sitting by the fire, hands wrapped around a tin cup full if coffee on a cold day, taking tentative sips in anticipation of the first swallow.

I will also drink it hot or cold, though the cold not being by intention - Very very seldom have I intentionally ordered a cold coffee - By the time I want something cold, I am past coffee for the day and have moved on to sweet tea. That I take iced by the gallon. 

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

When i'm cold i drink hot drinks. Vice versa when i'm hot. Never understood people who do the opposite.

Sometimes i'm hot in winter.

[roamer_1]

That tin cup is a true thing...

I have a 40 gallon travel cup... I measure my pour-over to meet what it will take. It's probably two proper coffee cups worth, in one cup, designed with a fat bottom to stay upright sitting on the floorboards of the truck... Yes, a throwback to when trucks did not have cup-holders and heated seats for princess asses...

But something is lost in that cup. The slosh-marks on the dashboard are gone... and that smell in the defrosters that is only there because of spilled coffee... Even the extra cussing from the spillage during the event - All fondly remembered by a duffer who was around before travel cups, not to mention cup-holders.

And the portion - that tin cup, too hot to handle at first, was always hot to the bottom - Because you STOPPED to drink it, and generally dared not to move till it was at least half gone. So the tendency was to be too hot, and remain hot to the very bottom because the act was mated to the intent, and the portion signified that intent... Added to a tin cup, with no insulation, the whole thing self-governed without any bow to time.

There is something there.

[sneakypete]

I rarely drink more than a 12 cup pot per day.

[catfish1957]

I rarely drink more than a 12 cup pot per day.

10 here.  And I thought my consumption was pretty excessive.

[The_Reader_David]

It has to be over 90 out before I'll even consider iced coffee, at which point iced cold brew becomes a possible drink of choice (though not as a first cup of coffee in the morning -- that has to be hot, preferably French press, though drip will do in a pinch), but never an iced latte.

As to Starbucks, they have served a useful purpose by killing off all the really bad independent coffeehouses. (Though how they managed that with their over-roasted cheap beans, I don't quite know.) Now wherever you go, if there's an independent coffeehouse that's been open for more than a year, it's almost guaranteed to be good.  If one must get caffeine from a Starbucks product, a simple (hot) latte is the only thing that manages to be palatable, not good mind you, but palatable.  Their brewed coffee is dreadful.

[deb]

I will drink cold brew from the local coffee shop, but I prefer my coffee piping hot.
If I go to Starbucks, I order tea. I absolutely DESPISE Starbucks coffee.

Coffee. One of the greatest pleasures in life.

[roamer_1]

I will drink cold brew from the local coffee shop, but I prefer my coffee piping hot.
If I go to Starbucks, I order tea. I absolutely DESPISE Starbucks coffee.

Coffee. One of the greatest pleasures in life.

That is quite right. I come from a kind that has made do more than most - Along the trail, you run out of most everything eventually, which leaves one less insistent about beverages, knowing all roads lead inexorably to pine needle tea with rose hips, or beloved chaga... So there is a pleasure found in all kinds as one ticks down the list to finally settle on what is available naturally.

My go bag has quite the selection - not only coffee, but several kinds of tea and cider and even hot chocolate mix - One might suppose that to be a generosity - a selection carried for hospitality toward others one might meet on the trail - And to a degree that might be true. But they are really all for me.

But I have never been shy of a preference for coffee - especially the closer one gets to sunrise. There is just nothing better than holding a bitter-strong cup of coffee first thing in the morning - And doing so beside a fire on a crisp mountain morning is the best of it all.

[Hoodat]

I absolutely DESPISE Starbucks coffee.

Char-bucks.  They overcook their beans.

[sneakypete]

Char-bucks.  They overcook their beans.

@Hoodat

I can honestly say I have never even tasted any Starbucks coffee.

I can remember going to a Starbucks counter in an airport twice to get a cup of coffee,but told them to keep it once they gave me the price.

I PREFER to consider myself as being "thrifty" instead of "cheap",but there was no way in HELL that I was going to pay that much for a cup of coffee. If you want to rob me,you should at least have the decency to pull a gun or a knife on me.

[Cyber Liberty]

Does Anyone Drink Hot Coffee Anymore?

I do, every damned day, even if it's 112 outside.