i try it!- danger in the kitchen laboratory.

if this blog post had a subheading, it would read: why leaving it to the professionals is sometimes the right thing to do.

so, during the SWAPmaine event a few weeks ago, the lovely keriann of mainely mara, turned me on to the starbucks black iced tea lemonade. HOLY CRAP. new heights of refreshing-ness! since that time, i think of drinking nothing else.

i’m not a coffee drinker, so the amount of time i spend at starbucks (which is inconveniently located multiple blocks from both my home & work) has always been fairly minimal. however, since SWAP day, i have been making any possible excuse to scoot my ass down to exchange street, all for the privilege of paying like $4 for something that tends to take me roughly 10 minutes to consume.

YET I CAN’T STOP.

the crack like pleasure that it affords me, appears to make the $4 surcharge fully worthwhile.

but $4 is expensive, and the $15 giftcard i had left over from xmas lasted almost about as long as it takes me to drink one of these fuckers. so in the spirit of practicality (starbucks is far) and frugality (starbucks is expensive), i decided that i would just gather the ingredients to make this mystical beverage, and assemble it myself in the kitchen lab. just think of all the dollars i would save!

HOW HARD COULD IT BE?

as it turns out, REAL HARD.

mistake #1: 3 teabags to 3 cups of water is TOO MUCH. either that, or the pg tips i had in my kitchen cabinet is like crazy supertea or some shit. the sheer amount of caffeine in my “at home” version kept me shaking and zooming through outer space all afternoon. actually, i still have a stomach ache.

mistake #2: it would be helpful if i actually had the forethought to make the tea the night before, instead of 15 minutes before. in my morning-induced delirium, it seemed like 10 minutes in the freezer would more than suffice to cool this molten liquid to room temperature. not true. despite adding almost a full tray of ice cubes to my nalgene bottle before adding the tea, not one of them was still present when i arrived at my work destination 8 minutes later.

mistake #3: trader joe’s lemonade is no match for the starbucks lemonade. either that, or i got the proportions SO WRONG. tasted like lemon pee water with a lot of caffeine. not delicious. not refreshing. not good. also, stomach STILL BURNING.

mistake #4: starbucks adds sweetener to their black iced tea lemonade, but i don’t need it. i usually only get mine half sweetened anyway… (see above re: lemon pee water).

i know that every day, people make their own cappuccinos and smoothies and other slightly downgraded versions of their favorite coffee store beverages with some degree of success. they seem happy. i also know that they save money this way. after today’s performance however, i have grave doubts about my ability to do this.

i would like to say that i will give this experiment one more try, but i probably won’t. i will more likely just throw some vodka in the lemonade and call it done.

if anyone out there in the universe (possibly current or former starbucks employees) has any sort of advice on what went wrong and how to correct it, i would be receptive to this. otherwise, we should all get together and have some lemonade based cocktails at my house and talk about how starbucks exists for a reason.