Every so often, Starbucks does something something so simply brilliant that you have no choice but to begrudgingly give them all your money.
Today, tomorrow and hopefully ever more, Starbucks’ irresistible tease is coffee ice cubes.
Yes, people have been making coffee ice cubes to stave off the dreaded diluted iced coffee since the dawn of ice cube trays. Last year, Starbucks even gave step-by-step instructions to make your own. (The process is just brew coffee, let it cool, fill an ice tray, let it freeze. Saved you a click.)
Still, any time you buy iced coffee out in the wild, you are forced to settle for standard ice cubes. Ice cubes of questionable water origin that take up valuable volume in your cup and dilute valuable caffeinated goodness.
Yes, cold brew helped the cause considerably. We have come so far from when your coffee cashier in the pre-barista days would pour hot coffee over ice cubes, not totally understanding what you wanted, turning your drink almost immediately into a watered-down, aggressively condensing mess.
But ice cubes made of coffee. Ice cubes that will not only keep iced coffee iced, but keep it caffeinated too. Ice cubes that will maintain important brew flavor and intensity.
Lest you worry about the hygiene and or labor concerns of baristas having to make these by hand, the ice cubes, made from a Colombian roast, arrive in one big, prepackaged block that baristas break into separate cubes.
And yet, nothing good in this life is free and for the luxury of coffee ice cubes, Starbucks is charging an additional 80 cents. They’re also only available at 100 locations in St. Louis and Baltimore for the next eight weeks, according to CNN. But, Starbucks did tell Cosmo that they are testing the cubes to “gather feedback from our customers” so if you Tweet, post and holler loud enough, coffee ice may just become a permanent, nationwide thing.
It must also be said that Starbucks is not the first or only to offer coffee ice cubes and also that, of course, the other innovators are overseas. Dunkin’ Donuts in South Korea began offering coffee ice cubes, milk chocolate ice cubes and fruit-flavored cubes.
Unfortunately, that means for now your options for coffee ice cubes are South Korea, St. Louis or staying home.