By Rodger Morrow
Editor & Publisher, Beaver County Business
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Once upon a time in America, coffee was hot, black, and poured by a waitress who called you “hon.” Then Starbucks arrived, waved a green mermaid wand, and suddenly everybody was wandering around with plastic cups full of what looked like melted milkshakes. Thus began the great iced-coffee boom, which—like all booms—was declared inevitable only after somebody figured out how to make a buck on it.
The first real tremor came in 1987, when The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf out in Westwood, California, introduced its “Ice Blended.” Starbucks, never one to let a revenue stream slip away, followed with the Frappuccino in 1995. By 2009 the whole country was guzzling iced coffee as if hot beverages had gone out of style. Young adults raised on Mountain Dew and Slushies discovered they could get their caffeine cold, without having to pretend to enjoy the scalding bitterness of their parents’ Maxwell House. By 2013, iced coffee was everywhere: in Dunkin’ cups, in McDonald’s drive-thrus, in the hands of interns who seemed to be drinking it as much for the Instagram aesthetic as for the caffeine.
Of course, the United States was late to this particular party. The Viennese were icing their coffee in the 17th century, after the Turks left behind a mountain of beans outside the city gates. In 1840s Algeria, French soldiers cooled their coffee with water and called it a Café Mazagran, which they hauled back to Paris along with a taste for empire. Vietnam has its cà phê sữa đá, made with condensed milk sweet enough to rot your teeth from across the room. Japan perfected the art of flash-chilling coffee over ice, while Sweden, being Sweden, decided the only way to improve coffee was to mix it with lemon juice. Brazil got in on the act by spiking it with Coca-Cola and topping it with ice cream. And the Greeks, never shy about shaking things up, gave us the frappe—a frothy, caffeinated milkshake that somehow makes you believe the Acropolis was built just to provide a place to sip one.
Of course, you don’t need to travel to Vienna or Hanoi to find your preferred brew. Beaver County has its own temples of caffeine, though the menu runs more to eggs and hashbrowns than frappes. At The Wooden Spoon in New Brighton, coffee arrives in the bottomless style, refilled before you can complain it’s lukewarm. Hash N Smash in Beaver serves it strong enough to prop your eyelids open through three borough council meetings. And at Brady’s Run Grille in Fallston, the mugs are heavy, the waitresses fast, and the coffee exactly the way it ought to be—hot, black, and a little bit resentful of your presence.
Which is why I find iced coffee faintly suspicious. Any Beaver County diner worth its grease trap has been serving hot coffee since the Eisenhower administration, and nobody ever thought to drop ice cubes in it. That kind of experimentation is best left to the Swedes.
Today iced coffee is as unavoidable as potholes on Route 51. You can’t walk past a convenience store cooler without seeing bottles of cold brew, mocha this, vanilla that. The summer drink has become an all-season lifestyle, marketed to us as if caffeine tastes better when accompanied by a straw.
I still prefer my coffee hot, bitter, and served in a chipped mug—preferably in a Beaver County diner where the waitress has known me long enough to call me “hon.” But I will admit this much: there’s something reassuring about a civilization that can take a bean roasted in Ethiopia, routed through Vienna, Paris, Hanoi, Tokyo, Stockholm, São Paulo, and Athens, and end up with a $4.95 iced latte at Dunkin’. Progress, like caffeine, comes in all temperatures.
If You’d Rather Drink Your Coffee Hot …
- The Wooden Spoon (New Brighton)
(724) 843-9025
Mon–Sat 7 AM–2 PM; Closed Sunday
Bottomless cups refilled before you can finish complaining. - Hash N Smash (Beaver)
(724) 770-2255
Daily 7 AM–3 PM
Strong enough to power you through three borough council meetings. - Brady’s Run Grille (Fallston)
(724) 770-2077
Mon–Sat 7 AM–8 PM; Sun 7 AM–2 PM
Heavy mugs, fast waitresses, and a brew that doesn’t apologize.
