iced coffee

Starbucks has announced its plan to offer an afternoon discount to morning customers. Present a receipt of your morning beverage after 2 p.m. and you can order any iced grande coffee drink (including Frappuccinos!) for just $2. The promotion begins on Tuesday and runs until Sept. 2. According to Brad Stevens, the vice president of customer relationship management, the discount is a no-brainer:

I think we've kind of hit the nail on the head. It's easy for baristas to implement and it's easy for customers to understand.

Since Starbucks's iced drinks are a little pricey the concept is quite clever. However, I rarely order two Starbucks drinks in one day, so I don't know how often I will be able to use the discount. How about you? Will you use the discount?

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Tomorrow, May 15, there are two fast-food freebies for you to catch. The first involves free chicken sandwiches, and the second involves free coffee.

First up, McDonald's is promoting their new Southern Style Chicken Biscuits and Sandwiches by giving them away at 14,000 of their US locations. If you purchase a medium or large beverage you can get a free chicken biscuit from 7 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. or a free chicken sandwich from 10:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. They're expecting to give away over eight million sandwiches, so be sure to get yours!

If you're not a chicken or McD's fan, then head over to your local Dunkin' Donuts where you can score yourself a free iced coffee with no strings attached. It's a small 16 oz. iced coffee and is available from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.

So tell me, are you going to hunt down one of these freebies?

You guys seemed pretty excited when I shared a simple tip to keep your iced coffee from getting watered down. Well, if you thought that one was good, here's one that the folks at Seattle's Best Coffee emailed to me. Instead of brewing their coffee like normal, they cold brew it overnight, resulting in an iced coffee that can stay fresh for up to seven days.

So what is cold brewing? It's essentially letting coffee grounds soak in room temperature overnight. You'll need a cold brew concentrator, or you could rig one up yourself with some jars and filters. If you're not interested in going the diy route, the Toddy Maker Cold Brew Coffee System is available for $28.

And if cold brew sounds too complicated (although it looks really quite simple), you can always brew up a batch of coffee, bring it to room temperature and then refrigerate to use the next day.

If you'd like to learn more about cold brewing, here's a step by step tutorial.

With summer on its way I thought I'd share with you one of my most simple tips. If you love a glass of iced coffee, but hate when it gets all watery, then do yourself a favor and make coffee ice cubes. By making coffee ice cubes you'll ensure your iced coffee won't get diluted and you'll have a good use for this morning's leftover coffee. Just use a clean ice tray, fill with coffee and freeze. Once frozen, remove cubes from the ice trays and put into a large ziploc style freezerbag (this helps protect it from that nasty freezer smell/taste). Use them instead of regular ice cubes and ta da! No more watery iced coffee for you!