You Can't Just Pour a Hot Coffee Over Ice and Call it an "Iced Coffee"

Oh happy day! One of my goals as a writer has been to get published in McSweeney’s. (You may recall that I try to keep my goals highly achievable in order to lessen the chances of ever being disappointed.) Well, not only did I get a piece published yesterday, but it was a piece I co-wrote with my two writer best friends, Leslie and Vanessa.

Read: First World Beverage Problems

Now, the best and worst part about having things published on the world wide web is that anyone—absolutely anyone—can comment or even contact you to tell you exactly what they think of your cockamamy ideas, and they never have to look you in the eye when they do so. This nugget arrived promptly:

Now, I don’t want to stir the crazy-pot too much more on this one (I have way more pressing inflammatory, self-important email comments to attend to on Elephant Journal), but I’m going to stick to my guns here. You can’t just make a hot coffee and pour it over ice and call it an iced coffee. Cuz, the ice melts, the coffee dilutes, and you have yourself a lukewarm nasty mess.  Trust me, Stan, it’s not good. You may have your very own coffeeshop AND your own web site, but if your customers are smiling at you and saying “thanks” when you give them a subpar iced coffee experience, they are just being polite. Maybe they don’t want to hurt your feelings.

To be fair to Stan, the method he so kindly hyperlinked to is way more elaborate than the sloppy pour-hot-coffee-over-ice jobby we were referring to in our article. So, maybe we are just having a misunderstanding.