I started drinking cold brew after watching Mary, my roommate’s girlfriend, enjoy it so much. I trusted her judgment. As someone who grew up in a Latin American country, iced coffee always seemed like a crazy American invention. Like, what do you mean you pour coffee over ice and drown it in syrup? When I was little, my aunt would make my sister and me grilled cheese sandwiches with hot coffee, loaded with milk and sugar. Even though Venezuela is extremely warm, we love our coffee steaming hot. It wasn’t until recently, thanks to social media, that iced coffee became a thing there.
For a while, I quit coffee altogether. It just didn’t taste as genuine as I remembered. Drinking it felt like I was betraying a small piece of home, since it didn’t taste true. But once I got to college, I tried to stay strong and avoid a caffeine dependency… until my math courses hit. Some of that coursework feels like it came straight from hell itself. So I gave in. At first, I kept things simple with bottled Dunkin’ caramel coffee. Not amazing, but it did the job. It was my slow way of reconnecting with coffee again, one sip at a time. Then, the following semester, I moved into an apartment with three3 of my freshman-year friends. What I didn’t realize was that living with my roommate, Jodi, also meant living with her girlfriend, Mary. Honestly, it felt like gaining an honorary fourth roommate, one who always had a coffee in hand.Â
Mary took her coffee seriously. The way she prepared it was almost artistic. I’d catch her mixing, pouring, and stirring like a scientist perfecting an experiment. I figured she was my chance to finally understand what made iced coffee so special.
That opportunity came after one brutal all-nighter for a Calc III exam. I got back home and collapsed on the couch, I passed out so hard that Jodi had to wake me up to move me to bed, but I don’t even remember that happening. To this day, it still feels like I teleported. The next morning, I woke up extremely disoriented, but to the smell of breakfast and laughter coming from the kitchen. Apparently, Jodi and Mary had agreed to do something nice for me after seeing how exhausted I was the night before. That’s the thing about living with them, it’s never just roommates sharing space; it’s friends quietly taking care of each other. Jodi made me a delicious omelet and a toasted bagel with strawberry cream cheese, and Mary was working on her specialty coffee for me. Watching her was watching a genius in her zone, or that Jeffree Star clip where everyone’s in awe as he arranges eyeshadow palettes with dramatic precision. Mary mixed cold brew with salted caramel creamer, drizzled in caramel syrup, and added a little squeeze of chocolate syrup. Then came the ice, where she pulled out her secret weapon: coffee ice cubes. She keeps a tray of them in the freezer so your drink never waters down, it just gets stronger. I was in shock.
That coffee didn’t last long; I finished it before my first class even started. It was sweet, smooth, and strong enough to wake the dead. Since that day, I have been a full convert. Every time I sip an iced coffee now, I think about that morning: the kindness in small gestures, the laughter filling our kitchen, and how home isn’t always where you come from, but who you share coffee with.