Folks who know me know that I take coffee seriously. So when someone decides to demean my favorite method of preparing my life’s blood, particularly in a nationally read forum in what I assume was not a satirical piece, I’m going to respond. For clarity’s sake, the original article from National Review by Marlo Safi (who probably drinks tea) is in normal font. My comments are in italics.
Soon, many parts of the United States will be unbearably hot. Texans and Arizonans will be able to bake cookies on their car dashboards; the garbage on the streets of New York will be especially pungent; Washington will not only figuratively be a swamp. And all across America, coffee consumers will turn their backs on traditional coffee in favor of a more “refreshing” vehicle for caffeine: cold brew.
Because there’s nothing like drinking a scalding hot cup of coffee outside on a 100+ degree day. Not that I haven’t done that when there’s no other option, but yeah, give me those cold beverages if I’m going to be outside in the summer.
As conservatives, we are inherently skeptical of any change of language norms that seeks to warp the objective meaning of words, and so we defend terms such as “man and woman,” “traditional marriage,” and now, we must defend “coffee.” “Coffee” is defined as a hot beverage made by steeping coffee in boiling water. Cold brew is made by soaking beans overnight, and the drink relies on time instead of heat to extract the flavor. The major disqualifying factor is that it’s cold.
Oh, a dictionary definition! The sure sign of someone trying to pad a word count! Here’s a protip: If you’re going to do this, at least check a dictionary first. Neither Merriam-Webster nor American Heritage (the preferred dictionary for conservatives) define coffee like this. The closest you get is “The beverage prepared from the seeds of this [the coffee] plant.” In short, cold brew is coffee as defined in every common dictionary. Thank u, next.
Starbucks’s imperial command over coffee is greatly responsible for this Orwellian redefinition. Its ubiquitous mermaid logo may read “Starbucks Coffee,” but the corporate café caliphate makes most of its profit from drinks sugary enough to induce a diabetic coma in a small mammal. Even more sinister is that Starbucks expanded into Milan in 2018, irreverently flexing its muscle at coffee purists who turn up their noses while its ostentatious drinks conquer the international beverage forum, marginalizing and undermining traditional coffee.
You do realize that you can order a regular coffee at Starbucks, right? Even just a double espresso if you want to feel all continental and fancy? No one is putting a gun to your head and requiring you to burn six bucks on a triple-venti half-caf almond milk unicorn Frappuccino. And coffee from the Clover system that some Starbucks have is fantastic. But wait…
Smaller coffee shops have followed in Starbucks’s footsteps. Today, “Let’s go out for coffee!” seems like an innocent request from a coworker or friend, and it should suggest that the order will include a cup of boiled water that was brewed with coffee beans — whether it’s a single shot of espresso or a cup of café americano, made with a French press or Moka Express. But too often, they mean something else. In the summer, they mean cold brew.
Oh horror! Oh hand wringing! A cold coffee beverage! One of the best things about Starbucks is that they’ve helped make good coffee nearly ubiquitous across America. I’m old enough to remember when a road trip coffee stop meant choosing between the warm sludge at McDonalds, and the warm sludge at a truck stop. Now everybody sells at least semi-decent coffee. It’s wonderful.
One New York City coffee-store owner told the New York Times in 2017 that in the summer, 65 percent of the “coffee” he sells is iced — every other part of the year, 75 percent of the “coffee” sold is hot. Iced coffee itself is a cousin of cold brew, but with nearly all of hot coffee’s features except the most significant one: heat. It’s brewed the same way, and then cooled. But demand for cold brew specifically is increasing, unsurprisingly, among my generation: Millennials. A habit of subversive behavior among Millennials has driven us to attack all of our civilization’s most sacred institutions, including coffee — the backbone of American productivity.
Or maybe the demand is because iced cold brew is objectively better than icing down a hot cup of coffee? Look, I’ll get to the science of this more in a little bit, but one of the biggest benefits of cold brew is that it makes a smoother, less bitter cup of coffee. For a cold beverage, that means you can make something delicious using less sweeteners and fewer additives to try and mask the bitter tang of iced down hot coffee.
As cold brew’s popularity metastasizes, usurping coffee for several months of the year, will we forget our proud national heritage? Cold brew requires patience and planning: One must make a prediction of business the next day in order to estimate how much to make the night before. This is a clear break from our proud tradition of urgency. While the harvesting and roasting of good coffee beans surely requires patience, has prepared coffee ever been associated with anything other than the quick satiation of a morning addiction, or the rush to meet a deadline? Like bread, coffee is a staple for good reason: One needs only five minutes, a heat source, a filtration method, and the beans. It’s dependable and democratic.
If making your own morning cup of cold brew takes more than about five minutes, then you’re a moron. Here’s the process for my first morning cup of HOT coffee: Step 1, fill kettle with water. Step 2, turn on the stove. Step 3, while water is heating up, remove previously made container of cold brew from refrigerator, pour about two shots worth into my favorite coffee mug, put the container back into the fridge, and wait for the water to finish boiling. Step 4, pour boiling water into mug. Elapsed time, about five minutes. If I wanted an iced cup of coffee, it would be even faster, since I’d just pour the same amount of cold brew into a glass, add some cold water, ice, and a dash of sugar.
Seriously, the only part of this that requires actual planning is remembering to prep a fresh batch of cold brew every few weeks. Which is about as difficult as remembering to restock coffee. And the wonder versatility of good cold brew is that you can use it for hot coffee, use it for iced coffee, or use it like you’d use espresso shots as a base for all sorts of fancy drinks. One of my current summer faves involves a few shots of cold brew, some apricot schnapps, a quick shot of rum, a quick squirt of honey, then milk and ice. It’s a great, somewhat boozy, drink for a lazy Sunday afternoon sitting in the garage watching the kids.
Coffee has even provoked constitutional debate. Would we have considered tort reform within the framework of the Seventh Amendment had it not been for 1994’s infamous hot-coffee lawsuit, Liebeck v. McDonald’s?
And yet we still don’t have tort reform, we have plenty of frivolous lawsuits, and that dumbass won the judgement against McDonald’s, which is why all of our coffee cups now say “Caution, Hot Beverage” on them.To those who will, during the summer months, abandon the beverage that gives many of us our will to live in the mornings, I ask just one concession to coffee purists: Drink your cold brew, but please, don’t call it “coffee.”
It’s coffee. It’s been coffee since the Japanese people invented the process, and then taught it to Dutch traders in the 17th century. This is why there’s still a version of the cold brew process known as “Kyoto-style”. Now that’s not to say that you need some giant glass contraption to enjoy a nice cup of cold or hot cold brew either. I brew with a Toddy Cold Brew system that’s almost as old as I am. That company’s been around since the 1960s. When my wife and I got married, we didn’t even own a coffee maker for our first fourteen years. We only finally got one because some people have an inexplicable attachment to bitter, angry water over delightfully smooth caffeinated joy. But I guess some people prefer New York style pizza too.
But you don’t even need that much effort just to try. A French press will do just fine for preparing a batch of cold brew. Just be careful: once you try it, it’s difficult to go back to any other kind of coffee.
Anyway, enjoy your coffee. And don’t take coffee advice from a (most likely) tea drinking New Yorker.