COLD BREW OR BUST
Cold brew is coffee in its most elevated form.
Disagreement can only mean one of three things:
A) You're a masochist
B) The only way to rouse you from a life of perpetual stupor is to pour burning liquid in to your mouth regardless of its flavor and you're suspicious tea is too vaguely British or Asian for your tastes
C) You've been eating the same cereal since you were eleven, go to the same all-inclusive hotel in Mexico each spring, and ritually purchase a new version of the same car model every six years, symptoms that indicate you are deathly afraid of even the smallest step outside a well-tread comfort zone
In theory, there's also potential a fourth option but it's one we'd rather not even acknowledge, which is that you honestly believe you enjoy the taste of coffee but fail to admit what you're consuming is, after transferring what can only be described as an embarrassing amount of sugar/ artificial flavoring/ milk/ miscellaneous foreign substances in to your cup, a beverage closer in profile and calorie count to a dessert than a product of Ethiopian beans plus hot water.
It's ok to admit you're wrong. People make decisions all the time with imperfect information, and no one's going to hold the past against you - at least not in this case. Because once you cut through the marketing - "But every actor to appear on NYPD Blue drank hot coffee like it was water!" - the facts are undeniable: cold brew isn't bitter, acidic or sour, you can keep it in the fridge for up to two weeks before it goes bad (unlike hot coffee's Jack Bauer 24 hours-till-stale race against the clock), and, just as restaurants charge more for aged steaks, there's a labor intensive process that goes in to every glass of cold brew that simply doesn't exist in hot coffee (unless you're willing to wait thirty minutes for a barista with a Cal Tech engineering degree to pour your coffee through a Rube Goldberg machine, but even that won't make it taste any less caustic).
Like cold brew, these Fall Leaf Pants from Sassafras are understated yet surprisingly effective and serve as the subtlest of nods to the superiority of your palate. They don't come in brown though, so watch your hands with that mug.
Price: $320
Brand: Sassafras
Store: Kafka
Why: These Fall Leaf Pants solve a problem you surely knew existed but perhaps could not articulate until now: a drought of pants that have enough pockets to haul around a ton of shit while not running as far away as possible from the memory of the off-brand cargo pants your mom bought you from Kohl's back in seventh grade. By shifting the pockets up to hip level Sassafras effectively conceals your stash while also ensuring your Kindle isn't slapping your knee as you walk to work. And with 100% cotton and reenforced double stitching these corduroy joints will last almost as long as that styrofoam coffee cup you just threw away - talk about an upgrade.