"IsItIcedCoffeeWeather" news and stories

Erin Meister trains baristas for North Carolina-based Counter Culture Coffee and sporadically maintains the blog Meet the Press Pot from her home in New York City. This is the third in a series of tips for the caffeine-addicted.

Since Isiticedcoffeeweather.com has finally (finally!) started answering in the affirmative, I think it's time you and I get chilly up in here. Of the numerous ways to make delicious iced coffee, my favorite is the popular Japanese style introduced to me by my colleagues and widely praised among its devotees: It's easy, adaptable and instantly gratifying -- like a beachside hot dog.

There are several different tools you can use to whip up a batch of summer's precious caffeinated lifeblood, depending on how much iced joe you require: a large Chemex will do the trick for the recipe below, but a cone coffee dripper positioned over a pitcher or cup (as at right) is perfect for smaller outputs.

Directions after the jump.

You know how as a kid you used to stand peering out the door wondering whether or not to wear a coat, and then your mom would shout that yes, you definitely need to wear a coat, because it's brisk out there. But then you'd get outside and it was too hot, so you wrapped the coat around your waist where it was this hateful bulky thing and you wished you could have had some correct source of information that was not your mother.

Well, now we have the Internet, which is always right. Case in point: Is It Iced Coffee Weather? Demanding and capricious at once, it's an ether-mom for coffee-addicted adults. Yesterday we typed in our ZIP code and were relieved to see that yes, yes it is iced coffee weather! No more standing in the Dunkin' Donuts line like a fool, trying to figure it out! Today, however, the Web Site of Power says "no." But we want iced coffee! Who is in charge of this thing? There is no "about" button, and no contact info. Who are you, iced coffee diva?!

Is it iced coffee weather in Alaska? Chicago? Florida? Why not in 90210, whose Starbucks-slurping residents are surely enraged by that fact? We want an authoritative chart, but it's not like we're, uh, bloggers -- we can't sit around all day typing numbers into a Web site. So report back: Visit the site and for the love of all that is holy please take our poll and hit the comments to tell us the answer to this burning question.