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Comment by Tuna-Fish | Hacker News Reader

> Coffee is brewed hot (195 - 205 degrees F), and I personally like it to be freshly brewed as I drink it. As I very carefully sipped my fresh Starbucks coffee today at the mall,

Starbucks coffee is not served anywhere near that hot. By their corporate guidance, the normal acceptable range of temperature for coffee served to customers is 145-165F. If you poured that in your lap, it would be very unlikely for you to receive third degree burns. The burn risk of water goes up very rapidly as temperature is increased above that. This is the entire point of the court case -- nearly everyone else in the country served coffee ~30-40F cooler than Mac, due to having found the risks too great, yet even after hundreds of complaints, MacDonalds decided to keep their temperature higher.

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>Starbucks coffee is not served anywhere near that hot.

True, it's usually not, although it's considered a "hack" to get better coffee to ask for hotter coffee from Starbucks (so that your drink stays warm in the cold and when you are taking your coffee with you): http://www.businessinsider.com/starbucks-drink-extra-hot-201...

The National Coffee Association recommends brewing between 195 and 205 and holding around 180 to 185 if not serving immediately (which it recommends). Source: http://www.ncausa.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=71

Many people who brew coffee at home have coffee that can be as hot as 205F. Fancy fresh pour over coffee from a nice coffeehouse will have just been brewed with water around that temperature.

And it also raises the interesting question of what these places are supposed to do about tea: if they serve you hot water and a tea bag, the water served should be close to boiling if it's herbal or black tea to get a proper extraction.

Either way, it's not quite so simple as "McDonalds was careless".

Have you ever had McDonalds coffee? It's not as though we're talking about the stuff you get after it's been through a civet cat's digestive system, where it's scarce and expensive and you really want to extract it at the recommended 200 degrees Fahrenheit to get every last molecule you can of the volatiles out of the beans, so that you aren't wasting your investment.

McDonalds coffee, conversely, is just plain old shit. It's the worst coffee I've ever had, and that is saying quite a lot. If you've ever tasted it, you know that they could brew it at 200, 180, or 140, and it's still going to taste just as godawful. There is absolutely no reason they need to be passing it out the drive-through window at temperatures high enough to peel skin and poach flesh if the half-awake minimum-wage worker who poured it didn't pop the lid on quite right -- or if, while taking the cup and getting it settled into the console, you fail to pay the sort of attention commensurate to a potentially life-threatening process which you probably didn't realize was potentially life-threatening.

All the hyperbole is not really adding to the conversation.

The underlying point that this really isn't about gourmet extraction of flavor is relevant, however. If Starbucks can serve lower-temperature coffee, McDonald's can, its coffee is not even as good as Starbucks'.

> Either way, it's not quite so simple as "McDonalds was careless".

No, it's far worse than McDonalds being careless: They knew that their practice was dangerous, and regularly resulted in medical treatments, yet did not change their procedures.

Unless they serve the coffee at a completely unrealistic temperature, someone out of millions will be regularly injured. So how many people are still injured at 160 degrees?

The fact that someone gets hurt does not prove that there was negligence. Compare how many people get into car accidents on the way to McDonalds.

Tea really is the perfect counterexample, isn't it? If you try to serve me water for tea at a "safe" 160F, I'm never going to buy tea from you again.

Okay, so let's say it's 165F and I spill a cup on someone. There's still going to be an injury. Scalding burns can occur at temperatures down to 125F or so.

Whose fault is it?

Does Starbucks have to lower the temperature of the coffee they're serving to maybe 115F in order to avoid responsibility? If I spill it in someone's eye, that may still cause an injury. Does Starbucks need to serve their hot coffee at 98.6F?

I don't know. It just starts to sound ridiculous on how sellers are supposed to completely protect us from ourselves when we misuse the products we buy.

WalMart sells guns, and those can be horribly misused quite easily.

I think it should be made clear that someone sympathetic to Liebeck's case is not necessarily in favor of treating all coffee spills the same nor in favor of this transparently constructed slippery slope towards nanny-statism you're building. Nor are they under any compulsion to defend it.

The details of the case are there for all to see and in no way do they paint a picture of common coffee incidents, despite the gratuitously oversimplified and cliched versions pandered to us by a generation of comics.

Why don't you go look at the pictures.

They would be just as bad if she spilled home made coffee using water from her own kettle. But then there would be no uproar then, would there? Or would she go and sue the maker of the kettle for making water so hot?

Your comparison is flawed.

She did not get a McDonalds kettle and pour just boiled water onto herself. She asked for a cup of coffee, paid, took the coffee out to the car and got in the passenger seat. They drove for a short while. They stopped the car. She removed the lid and spilled the coffee.

A more fair comparison would be if she had poured her boiled kettle into a mug, carried that through to another room, and spilled it on herself as she sat down.

It's likely that in the latter case the water which would have been cooled by the mug and a metal spoon would have been less hot. That would have given her a few more seconds to remove the scalding clothing, which would have helped to reduce the severity of her injuries.

Part of the problem is that McDonalds was serving coffee hotter than people would have it at home because McDonalds wanted it to stay hot for the duration of the journey.

McDonalds wanted it to stay hot for the duration of the journey

Because McDonalds customers want the coffee to stay hot for the duration of the journey and all customers know that coffee is very hot and they need to be careful with it.

I think it comes down to expectations. There's an expectation when you buy a drink that it will be served at a drinkable temperature. True, there's also an expectation when you buy coffee that it will be served at a temperature hot enough to cause injuries if you spill it on yourself. But the expectation is that those injuries will be first or perhaps second degree burns, certainly not third. Had that been the case, I don't think any jury would have awarded her any money. I also don't think she would have sued.

To continue your Walmart analogy, the expectation would be that the guns are sold empty. But if instead Walmart were selling guns preloaded without warning the customers that there were bullets already in the guns, I would argue that Walmart would be at least some percentage at fault when some percentage of their customers inevitably shot themselves or others, just as it was some percentage McDonald's fault when their customers spilled the dangerously hot coffee on themselves.

> But if instead Walmart were selling guns preloaded without warning the customers that there were bullets already in the guns, I would argue that Walmart would be at least some percentage at fault when some percentage of their customers inevitably shot themselves or others

I see your point, but I think it might be worth clarifying that despite Walmart's probable liability, this would in no way indemnify their customers; the first rule of gun safety is RESPECT EVERY GUN AS LOADED until disassembled into its component parts, no exceptions.

> But the expectation is that those injuries will be first or perhaps second degree burns, certainly not third.

That expectation is unreasonable. If you go to Starbucks today and get a black coffee, that coffee will be hot enough to give you third degree burns. If you buy black coffee from Mcdonalds today, it will likely be just as hot as the coffee was that burned that woman two decades ago.

The industry standard was and continues to be serving coffee that can cause 3rd degree burns. You would do well to expect that.

I've found various sources claiming that Starbucks serves coffee at temperatures ranging from ~140 degrees F to ~190 degrees F. Most of these sources claim that their temperature is 'industry-standard'. I haven't been able to find an origin for any of these claims beyond the Specialty Coffee Association of America [0], who claim a standard 'cupping temperature' of 200+-2 degrees F.

Can anyone provide a reliable source for whether or not there is a standard temperature for coffee (and what that temperature is, if it exists)? Obviously, a certain degree of variance is expected based on the time between brewing and serving - if the variance really is ~50 degrees F, I don't see anything wrong with that answer if it's sourced.

[0] http://www.scaa.org/?page=resources&d=cupping-standards

I don't feel like finding a link to a source for you. After 10 years of roasting my own beans from home, I can assure you that the temperature range for brewing is 195-205 as shown in at least one other post and in your link. To do so in a lower temperature impedes the flavor extraction process and provides a poorer cup of coffee no matter the quality of the bean.

To do so is a disservice to the customer. (I also own two restaurants.)

Hm that must be why Starbucks drinks get cold so fast. Or maybe it's the paper cup. McD coffee in an insulated cup is still nicely hot by the time I get to work. When I make tea, or coffee with my Aeropress, I use boiling water right out of the kettle. I agree with GP, coffee should be HOT.

It will taste better if you use water that is at 90C or 194F.

You can personally opt to drink boiling water directly from the kettle if you want to and there will be no lawsuits, but that's not a comparable situation.

Have you read the Aeropress instructions? They recommend water at 175F (80C) [1]

[1] http://aerobie.com/images/AeroPress%20Instructions%20for%20W...

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