Hot beverages, and how to ruin them.
9Number one on my personal list of gripes about hot beverages outside of those I make at home is the certainty that any given coffeemaker in a hotel (and many offices) will have been forever made useless for the brewing of tea or the heating of water for cocoa by having had already-brewed coffee poured back into it to reheat. Second place goes to the restaurants that brew tea in their coffeemaker using the same basket in which they’ve brewed coffee.
What ways have you found that others have ruined hot beverages, aside from the obvious “use the wrong amount or use crap ingredients”?
- 7 comments, 36 replies
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Here, where we’re at a high altitude, water boils at about 10 degrees less than at sea level. So it can be hard to get a truly hot beverage, especially at Starbux where they’re using a rule book developed in Seattle.
@Kyeh
The high-altitude lowered-boiling-temp effect is probably aggravated by the fact that evaporation cooling works faster at the lower ambient pressure, too. I don’t know exactly how much of a difference it makes, but it would contribute to the problem.
@werehatrack Yes, that too.
@Kyeh You’re drinking it at 202 F?
@blaineg No, it’s more the problem of it cooling down fast so by the time you actually get it and sit down it’s approaching room temperature.
Just giving you lukewarm water for hot cocoa so the cocoa barley even mixes into the water and then it’s basically cold by the time you drink it. It’s called “hot cocoa” for a reason. If I wanted lukewarm cocoa I’d order it that way.
@Star2236 I was legitimately wondering where you could find a barley cocoa drink until I realised you meant barely. I hecking love barley! Almost as much as I love @Barney!
@curtise @Star2236 Aw, @curtise, after the day I’ve had today, I really needed to hear this from you. Thanks.
@Barney sorry it was a rough one! Sending heaps of warm awesome-days-ahead fuzzies your way!
PANS! GLANDS! CRAYONS! AWESOME!
@Barney @curtise @Star2236
Hot Cocoa Natural Blend Coffee Alternative - Instant, Healthy, Chocolate Flavor Coffee Substitute (7oz) - Caffeine Free Coffee Replacement for Breakfast, Gourmet & Pantry Pack https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073V9FL3F/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_101WC3BR71P8XE9P55EC
@jaybird @Star2236 That is some epic barley-adjacent cocoa-adjacent!!
@Barney @curtise
Stupid auto correct on my phone. I even proofread that and didn’t catch it too.
@Barney @curtise @Star2236 So annoying! I call mine “autoINcorrect”
Meh really needs to give posters more editing time just to fix those gems! 
@Barney @curtise @ircon96 @Star2236
I call it Autocorrupt.
If the cup is too hot to hold. This morning Starbucks gave me a small coffee but no sleeve and the cup was uncomfortable to grab.
Carbonation.
@blaineg Okay, now I have a question - where do you get carbonated hot beverages?
@Kyeh No idea, but I could make it for you if you really want.
@blaineg Wow! I’d have to try it - not sure I’d like it, but it’s intriguing.
I’ve used carbonated drinks to make jello - it actually does give it a fizzy quality.
@blaineg I have to imagine a heated carbonated drink would go flat pretty quickly
Well, the question was how to ruin them.
@blaineg, @Kyeh There’s a lady in my office who used a Sodastream to make carbonated coffee. She used Folgers crystals, sugar and some kind of powdered vanilla creamer to mix up a coffee flavoured syrup goop. Into the Sodastream, and out popped bubbly coffee.
I admit I’m not a huge coffee fan, but still… it was pretty awful. She really loved it though.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@blaineg @ruouttaurmind
It definitely sounds weird.
Was it hot though?
@Kyeh She would drink it hot in the winter, on ice in the summer. She hasn’t made any in a while. I’m guessing she lost her steel to act like it was actually tasty.
@Kyeh @ruouttaurmind My rig above is the mad scientist version of a Soadstream. SWMBO wanted wanted one, but the ongoing cost for their CO2 bottles was way too high for me. A little googling lead me down the DIY path to this. After the initial cost, it’s nearly free to run.
@Kyeh @ruouttaurmind We’ve played with carbonating fruit as well.
@blaineg @ruouttaurmind
So how does that work - do you carbonate the inside of a single piece of fruit, like a whole melon?
I love the idea of a do-it-yourself carbonator.
I buy a lot of La Croix and similar waters and not only are they kind of pricey, the cartons also take up a lot of space (because I buy up a bunch when they’re on sale.)
@Kyeh @ruouttaurmind No, I use a pressure vessel (just a large water filter housing) and put the fruit inside of it. I’m using 50-60 psi, and the filter is rated for something like 100-150 psi, so there’s plenty of margin.
I don’t imagine a melon could hold a whole lot of pressure, but that sounds like it could be a fun adventure - outside!
Really watery fruits work best: oranges, berries, etc. My favorites were orange slices, strawberries & raspberries. They don’t hold the carbonation for a long time, so you want to do the amount you’ll eat. I’ve tried leaving the fruit under pressure, but it tends to go mushy.
@blaineg @ruouttaurmind
That sounds so intriguing; fizzy fruit!
And you can one-up Gallagher:
When you ask for tea in a restaurant and they bring you one, usually generic, tea bag and a little container of “hot” water. The water is never hot enough to get the tea dark enough, and there’s always enough water for a cup and a half of tea.
If you ask for another cup of tea, they’re likely to charge you for the second cup, which is terribly unfair. Tea is cheaper than coffee, yet they give unlimited refills on coffee. Soda too. The only place I can count on getting truly hot tea and plenty of it is a Chinese restaurant; they bring out a pot of tea and will bring more if you ask for it.
@lisagd Or England - I loved being able to get a full pot of brewed tea at breakfast!
@lisagd Love that Chinese tea! I usually opt for iced in restaurants, which usually come with free refills, and prefer cold beverages in general, but i can easily drink a whole pot of Chinese tea by myself!
The fact that it’s free makes it that much more tasty, I think! 
@Kyeh I’ll add that to my extensive list of reasons I want to go to there!
I have never heard of people pouring coffee back into a coffee maker to reheat it. Is that really a thing people do?
I would never use a coffee maker as a source for hot water for tea anyway because it won’t get the water up to full temperature and I would never expect it to be free enough of coffee residue to not contaminate my tea.
@Limewater That’s usually the only source of hot enough water in a hotel room, though.
@Limewater @lisagd
In the US, no kettle is provided, and only the completely uninformed or psychopathic would regard a hotel room coffeemaker as a suitable substitute. And yet, the sadists running the show typically provide a tea bag or two. I have a travel kettle that I use, whether there is a coffeemaker or not. And a cache of English Breakfast.
@Limewater @lisagd
And sadly, yes, people do pour their cold (not always black or unsweetened) coffee back into the coffeemaker to reheat it. My last MIL did that to the hot-tank Bunn I was using as my iced tea brewer. It took the better part of three hours of work to dismantle, detox and descale it for return to service. She apparently had no idea that office-style Bunns have a reservoir, and she routinely dumped a half-cup back into the top of her Mr Coffee all the time. Ewwww.
@Limewater @lisagd @werehatrack
Does she not own a microwave???
@chienfou @Limewater @lisagd
She had a microwave, yes. One of the superstupid “smart” ones with just buttons marked with Things instead of a direct-entry timer and power level setting. And she didn’t like it because it burned everything, except for the things that it hardly heated at all.
@werehatrack
Oh yes the infamous “new and improved”…
@chienfou @werehatrack
“In order to serve you better…”
One year we got a message
from the administration that they were instituting a
“service enhancement”
to the custodians’ routines: they would henceforth no longer dump waste baskets in any private office spaces; we had to start doing it ourselves.
I have the opposite problem as most of you, whenever I get a hot drink it’s always way too hot and I need to wait 20 minutes to have a sip