Hot Coffee or Iced Coffee: The Ultimate Decision

An existential choice.

Every morning, after I fire up my Keurig, eat a bowl of Special K with Chocolate, and see what’s up on Celebitchy.com, I face my most infinite — and until now, intimate — dilemma: Should I get a hot or iced coffee for my second coffee of the day?

After 30 years on this earth considering this question (I drank coffee as a baby), I still think there’s no easy answer to it. But I have discovered some things about coffee, and myself. I will share them with you here.

First things first: Is coffee good? Empirically, yes. Coffee is comforting and it smells wonderful. I love the sound my Keurig makes when it is brewing coffee, like a cat chewing on a hot pipe. And what is better than a big cup of joe while sitting on a deck overlooking the mountains. I’ve never done this, but I’ve seen people do it on Instagram.

But coffee is also bad. It often tastes like shit, even with milk in it. And it’s a drug. Very dangerous! I gotta have my java like a sex addict needs to fuck his girlfriend’s cousin at her own engagement party. Coffee owns me.

I usually get my coffee from McDonald’s, because it is $1 and you can get cream in tiny containers on the side and pour the cream into the coffee yourself and then IF YOU WANT lick the cream containers. It’s a positive customer experience.

But still, my vicious predicament persists, each morning as I approach McDonald’s: hot or iced? My indecision paralyzes me. Hot coffee, as discussed, is very comforting. It is nice to hold a hot cup in your hands, especially while wearing a big sweater and pretending to talk to Julia Roberts. Even in the summer, I like hot coffee — the morning is a rough time, being ripped from the womb of bed, and one should have a warm drink as to ease them into the day.

But iced coffee can also be delicious. If you get the coffee-milk-cream-simple syrup ratio just right, it can taste like the best bad milkshake. I love the end of an iced coffee when it’s just ice and some coffee water. Slurp slurp. Iced coffee is breezy and fun. You can take one to the beach and use the sand as a cupholder and then oops! Your top falls off in the ocean. That wouldn’t happen if you brought a hot coffee to the beach.

I’ve begun to fear, however, that hot coffee might be uncool. As good as I look with my hot McDonald’s cup, I look decidedly better with a large iced McCafe, the size of my head, beige with cream. Iced coffee says: What is stress? Are you going to Frieze? Yes, I got this from Totokaelo. I would love to go skateboarding later. Let’s vape. Hot coffee says: I am clenching both my jaw and my butt at the same time.

Of course, succumbing to notions of “coolness” is the most uncool thing one can do. So maybe we should just accept, as a culture, that iced coffee is pretty bad. It does not cure thirst of any kind. It tastes like true shit if you try to make it at home. Certain brews make you feel as if you have smoked meth, while others give you no buzz at all. Pretty soon one iced coffee from Blue Go Fuck Yourself Bottle will be $8. And there are so many other better drinks than iced coffee: Diet Coke, hot coffee, tea, bong juice.

By now you might assume that I have solved my own dilemma and am enjoying a steaming cup of java while rereading the top posts on Celebitchy.com. But no. Like a squid trapped in a trawl, I have by my side a large iced coffee that was at least $4 and tastes like ass. Coffee has owned me again.