Friday, January 14, 2005
lava java
Every so often it actually gets cold down here in Texas. And by cold, I mean below 50. I celebrate the cold weather the same way everybody else does, by going to Starbucks and getting me a nice cup of coffee. Because I loooove coffee. But I celebrate not with a hot cup of coffee, but with a nice frosty cup of Mocha Frappuccino, topped with several inches of whipped cream. Yes, a cold beverage. You see, to us non-natives, 49 degrees is not all that cold, and it's certainly not so cold that I can't enjoy a cold beverage when I'm inside the heated walls of my neighborhood Starbucks. Or one of my neighborhood Starbucks. There are like fifty within a three mile radius.
But I always hear the same thing when I walk into Starbucks to order my Mocha Frappuccino. "What, are you frickin' crazy?!? It's frickin' freezing out there!!!" Actually, they never say this, but I know they're thinking it. The thing that I do hear goes something like this: "I'll have a venti double mocha decaf espresso white chocolate latte, extra hot." Extra hot?! What's that all about? Did somebody not tell these people that coffee is already hot? Making it any hotter would only render the beverage undrinkable. And then I start to wonder, if these people need an "extra hot" beverage when it's 49 degrees, what would they order if it was actually cold outside? "Yeah, I'll take a double shot of molten lava mixed with crushed hot coal, sprinkled with burning embers."
I really don't understand why the coffee needs to be this hot. A normal cup of Starbucks coffee is already heated to the point where it is too hot to drink, but will cool to a drinkable level within about three minutes. It's a great system, and that's why Starbucks succeeded and their competition, whoever that might have been, failed. But extra hot coffee? Perhaps the searing pain of the third degree burns lining every exposed area of your mouth helps take your mind off of the intense 49 degree weather that's just a double-paned window away.
Can somebody please explain this to me?
¶ monger187 wrote this on 1/14/2005
But I always hear the same thing when I walk into Starbucks to order my Mocha Frappuccino. "What, are you frickin' crazy?!? It's frickin' freezing out there!!!" Actually, they never say this, but I know they're thinking it. The thing that I do hear goes something like this: "I'll have a venti double mocha decaf espresso white chocolate latte, extra hot." Extra hot?! What's that all about? Did somebody not tell these people that coffee is already hot? Making it any hotter would only render the beverage undrinkable. And then I start to wonder, if these people need an "extra hot" beverage when it's 49 degrees, what would they order if it was actually cold outside? "Yeah, I'll take a double shot of molten lava mixed with crushed hot coal, sprinkled with burning embers."
I really don't understand why the coffee needs to be this hot. A normal cup of Starbucks coffee is already heated to the point where it is too hot to drink, but will cool to a drinkable level within about three minutes. It's a great system, and that's why Starbucks succeeded and their competition, whoever that might have been, failed. But extra hot coffee? Perhaps the searing pain of the third degree burns lining every exposed area of your mouth helps take your mind off of the intense 49 degree weather that's just a double-paned window away.
Can somebody please explain this to me?
¶ monger187 wrote this on 1/14/2005
