Iced

I have my issues with the cafeteria at work, which I've previously mentioned. But the coffee is consistently good (though they frequently seem to run out of the blend I prefer, so I suspect it's the favorite of a lot of other people as well), and if you bring a travel cup (instead of using and discarding a new cup, lid, and heat sleeve every day), they give a pretty generous discount off the regular price, and it's obviously better for the environment.

Now that we're in the firm, sweaty grip of the heat and humidity, my thoughts naturally turn to the refreshment of iced coffee. Once I asked the worker who makes and tends to the coffee why the cafeteria did not offer iced coffee. He told me that they had tried offering it a couple of years ago, but it didn't work out. He was vague on the details, so I just left it at that.

This morning I went to get my coffee as usual, and as I entered the serving area, I said hi to the coffee guy. He returned my greeting and pointed at the coffee urns, which at that point were behind me, and said, "We have iced coffee." I guess they decided to try again, so I figured I should at least give it a shot and see if it was decent.

I picked up a cup and looked around, but there was no ice anywhere. I thought that was a little odd; you can hardly call your coffee iced if it isn't chilled by ice cubes. (This was probably one of those vague details about why serving iced coffee did not work out before.) For a moment I was worried that the coffee in the new urn would be hot, or warm. But it was really more like slightly cooler than room temperature. Since I knew we had ice cubes in our office kitchen's fridge, I decided to forge ahead.

The coffee turned out to be okay, but not great. I may have added a little too much cream, but I think really it wasn't brewed as strongly as iced coffee should be. I'll try it one more time before giving up on it. But if I do decide to keep getting it, I'm going to need a bigger travel cup.