Coffee Confession Number Four

Confession is good for the soul. I tend to do it a lot on the blog. For those of you who may be new here, we should probably do a quick review of the coffee confessions to date.

Coffee Confession Number One was how I thought that Starbucks coffee was underrated. Actually, I look back on that one and cringe a little bit. I stand by the sentiment, but with the caveat of sticking to the lighter blonde roasts.

Coffee Confession Number Two was that I drink crappy coffee at home for my first cup. Although this too has changed over the years. Mrs. Fussy no longer wakes me up with a hot cup of coffee in bed. The good news is that now my first cup of coffee is far less bracing.

Coffee Confession Number Three involved me buying into the Starbucksification of coffee. Officially, I have not ordered that drink a second time. But I might. What I will never do is pay for one of those monstrosities.

Which brings us up to date for my latest transgression. I guess the moral of this story is to never say never.

Before embarking on the Tour de Wing: Pine Hills-ish Edition, I got a coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts… and I liked it. For those who might be aghast, I have photographic proof of my transgression. Plus, there were witnesses.

Please allow me to explain a few things that led up to this moment. Perhaps the main one involved doing research for this blog on the pricing of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. The only way I could get that information late at night was to download the Dunkin’ Donuts app. And the only way to activate the app was to load a minimum of two dollars onto it.

So I did. My thought at the time was that in some emergency, I might use the credit to get an iced tea at Dunkin’ Donuts, which up until recently I held to be the only good thing at the chain.

But there I was. Waiting in the food court for the tour to begin, warm from the spring heat, and a little bit sluggish. A giant iced coffee sounded like just the thing, and I had never tried the Dunkin’ cold brew.

Somehow, I didn’t even pay for the drink. Because it seems as if when you download the app, and put two dollars onto the thing, they give you free drink code.

So, I still have my two dollars.

Amazingly, the Dunkin’ cold brew did not suck. The clerk was more than a little taken aback when I suggested that I wanted neither cream nor sugar in my drink. It seemed like somethin he never encountered before.

However, the cold brew didn’t need it. Cold brewing is a very forgiving technique for making terrible coffee beans into something pleasant to drink. I should know. I do this almost every day at home.

Good beans can get either the pour over or the french press treatment at home. But really, I prefer to drink good coffee out at great cafes where the equipment, the product, and the brewing expertise are top notch.

So now, there are two things that don’t suck at Dunkin’ Donuts: the iced tea and the cold brew. And invariably, at some point, I’ll be desperate enough to go back and turn my two dollar credit into one of those.

In the meantime, I still advocate for supporting better business that aren’t selling unbelievably bad versions of one of my favorite deep fried sweets. But should you be hell bent on spending your money at a chain that hasn’t quite put all the independent donut shops out of business yet, you could do worse than to get the cold brew.