Life's really too short to be drinking shitty {iced} coffee.

I love iced coffee.
Like a lot.
Seriously, just pump it into my veins.

It all started with Starbucks and their reward program. I've been a member since the year it rolled out (2008). I got one of original "gold cards" (my mom paid the $25 fee) for my 20th birthday. Click here to know what I'm talking about. Go to point "I" for the history of the Starbucks reward program.

After the program was phased out, they replaced it with "stars", earn x amount of stars to remain a gold level member for another year. A tall iced coffee, no sweetener with fat free milk is/was $2.60 (that includes MI 6% sales tax). Cheap and it wasn't brewed coffee (something I could do at home) and it earned me a star. While I love[ed] going to Starbucks, just for the whole thrill of going somewhere and drinking coffee, that's someplace other than my home...I tried for years to make my own coffee shop worthy iced coffee..for those times I wanted to stay in my sweatpants and not go out for that tall-iced-no sweetener-with-fat free milk-iced coffee. Every. single. time. it turned out bad. Always bitter and definitely oxidizes way too quickly and only good for .01 seconds.

Then my sister and bro-in-law moved to California--where the weather is always sunny and there's on-going drought that's been on-going for the past 10 years or so.

One day last Winter (the winter that would NEVER END) my sister (both sister and bro-in-law work at Intelligentsia. Jill-retail/shop, Josh-production room) texted me to say that I NEED to try some Japanese iced coffee method.

Yeah.
It totally blows Starbucks out of the water.

After a quick Google research, I learned that it's called flash brewing. Starbucks uses a method called cold brewing. You can do more research about how each method captures the flavors, blah blah blah. It's really extensive. There's a big long debate about what's the best iced coffee brewing method...for me, the choice will always be flash brewing/Japanese style.

Instructions: https://counterculturecoffee.com/learn/iced-coffee

It's seriously worth buying a kitchen scale and pour over cone or a Chemex for this. This method will never disappoint me! Always good to buy the freshest coffee beans.

BTW I'm getting a little disappointed in Starbucks. I had a latte at JPs that was seriously out of this world. I've slowly come to the realization that life is really too short for gross iced coffees. :)