Coffee: If I'm in starbucks, then it's a grande skinny vanilla latte (I need the sweet taste to compensate for the mediocre coffee and/or the bad way it's been made :) ). If I'm in a place with good coffee then a latte, maybe with soy, maybe without. If I'm in New Zealand, a flat white. Always a flat white.

Anything else: I'm a sucker for a fancy lemonade, like mint or blueberry or what have you.

If I'm at Starbucks and it's fall/winter and want something hot: either a Pumpkin Spice Latte or Eggnog Latte. Mmmm.

Otherwise wanting something hot: vanilla latte with whole milk, whipped cream, and an extra pump of vanilla. If I want something cold: vanilla bean or strawberries and cream frap.

If I'm elsewhere: I dig ginger ale or fancy blended drinks like frozen lemonades.

Lemonade! Kind of obsessed with frozen lemonade for summer, in fact. I'm still bummed Dunkin' Donuts got rid of their Lemonade Coolatta, and it's been, what, 2 years? Desperately wanting to visit this truck ASAP!

12 oz latte, skim milk. And Starbucks is the lowest I am willing to go. Yes I am obnoxious about coffee.

In a coffee shop it's usually an Americano (black) or, if it's a hot day, an iced coffee. But I really don't like all those frou-frou coffee drinks that come with whipped cream and syrup.

In a bar or a restaurant I usually order sparkling water, but I do like citrus drinks. Fatty's in Astoria makes the best virgin mojito I've ever tasted.

Iced (herb) tea during the day, caffe latte or hot herb tea after dinner, seltzer at the movies and sometimes diet soda. I add two sugars to the latte, but other wise I haven't liked drinks to which someone else has added sugar or HFCS since I was sent to fat camp and all they had was diet soda. Since then sugared drinks taste gloppy to me.

Double espresso. I take it as it comes, no sweeteners.

At home I drink coffee, black, brewed from ground beans I buy around the corner, at Carmel Grocery. "Golden Blend" costs $7 a pound and it's roasted right there in the store (they also roast nuts and seeds on the premises). It's the best.

Some afternoons I make matcha (powdered green tea for Japanese tea ceremony). I love it, and I have what I need to make it, so I do. I try not to take caffeine after 2:30 pm.

Occasionally I have club soda or seltzer water with a jot of Angostura aromatic bitters.

Once in a blue moon I drink pop. I used to take Mountain Dew, but then Pepsico offered their Throwback line briefly, sweetened with cane sugar instead of corn products. When they discontinued the cane sugar Dew, I discovered I'd lost the taste for corn sweeteners. Now I have a Cherry Zero if I'm so inclined, or a Diet Cherry Dr. Pepper. If neither is available, I take the hint and drink water.

In fact, non-fruit sugar messes with my system anymore, so I pretty much avoid it altogether.

Chai (hot or iced) and iced tea.

Starbucks has this Hibiscus Berry Refresher thing that is like adult Kool-Aid without the fakeyness. They sell little Via packets of the drink mix, and it was a lifesaver when we went to Ebertfest and I didn't want to drink caffeinated sodas all day and night. All I had to do was buy a single bottle of water, and then I could refill it and mix it all up.

Drink orders, or coffee orders?

Hugh, have you tried the Aeropress to brew your coffee?

Stopped drinking coffee around 2000. I will occasionally have an espresso after a meal.

have you tried the Aeropress

No, but they seem like they'd make good coffee. I used to use a French press but my fiancee and I shattered during some kitchen tomfoolery and now I use a pour-over cone.

Many years ago, I was able to get a blend called Deep Disco from my local coffee house (they had some kind of a deal with Gimme, out of Ithaca, but apparently some catastrophe befell Ethipoia's Sidamo highlands and now those beans are unavailable. Tant pis, that was the best coffee ever.

Double espresso or black Americano in the morning. Not a fan of milk or sugar except in hot chocolate, which I sometimes drink in the afternoons. The rest of the time I drink water.

Diet Coke (1 a day) and Crystal Lite. Orange is the current favorite flavor followed by lemonade and then pomegranate-cherry. I know its a lot of chemicals and I should just drink water.

I'm such a coffee snob that I can't find any tolerable places to get as much as a simple latte without walking for 15 minutes. My neighborhood is so snobby that the neighborhood association refused to let Starbucks open in a nearby vacant space (not a big loss to me, since I'd still be walking 15 minutes to the other place anyway). I'm also so snobby that I turn up my nose at french press coffee. SF has done wonders for my ability to be *that* kind of asshole.

I'm in love with my Bialetti Mukka Express, but sadly deprived of it right now, so I have given in to my evil Diet Coke habit again. I'll never be too snobby to give up evil evil Diet Coke.

Hugh, I can't recommend the Aeropress highly enough. The best $25 I ever spent.

Flat White (large). My favorite is from Hudsons Coffee, but there isn't one near where I work now, so I'm stuck with The Coffee Club.

The flat white does not seem to be a universal thing, though - I ordered one at a hotel in Vetnam not long ago and spent way too long trying to explain what it was until giving up and ordering a cappuccino, which doesn't scratch the same itch, unfortunately.

The largest sized coffee with brown sugar and milk from Bean around the World. A local coffee chain in Vancouver

Flat white has made it to the UK (explicitly marketed as an Aus/NZ import), dg and gaspode - don't know about the rest of the world though.

I can't justify to myself spending so much on coffee when I can brew simple, strong black coffee for pennies at home.

I am a sucker for fresh-squeezed lemonade, however.

There was an antipodean-Italian place in Nolita that had flat white, but I don't know if it's still there.

The best non alcoholic thing I've had is soda zitron in Austria.

The US can't touch Europe for beverages. Even lowly bottled sodas are much more flavorful.

To think, all this time there has been a name for how I prefer my cappuccino, lucking out so many don't know how to "properly" steam milk.
Clearly, I was never meant for this hemisphere.

Just plain Iced Tea. No sugar. No lemon. No flavoring of any kind needed.

There was an antipodean-Italian place in Nolita that had flat white, but I don't know if it's still there.

Probably Ruby's cafe. I think it's still there.

The Thirsty Koala in Astoria purports to make flat whites, but they (or rather the one that I had) aren't great.

Flat white.

I love that there is a name for things; I mean, of course there would be for some things but until you know it, it's a huge mystery.
For a brief time in the early 90s when I had a machine, this is what I was doing to milk, and I've found ways to at least get people to "deflate" the steamed milk, but in general outside more cosmopolitan areas, they have no idea what they are really doing or that there is a difference in the taste of steamed and not steamed milk. Do not talk to me about lattes, child. If I am paying for caffeine I am not paying for a large quantity of plain milk. I do not know anyone who needs a dry foam or likes it, and I do know one or two actually trained baristas who I can talk into approximating a flat white, but really, all my "coffee related snobbery" or what have you died in the 90s. I can't think of the last time i noted a coffee drink for being in anyway exceptional; it's pretty much just a caffeine delivery system and/or excuse to take a break.

Ah, and that thing whizzing by was my window to do a thing I'd already decided i was not doing today.

I did have a thing for the largest size cappuccino with a shot of that Irish Cream flavoring at this one convenient place I frequented with this cool barista. Certain people in this town will throw in extra espresso shots when they see me coming and are having the odd moment or day.

I don't do carbonation for the most part, but i do like the occasional refreshing drink, something not overly sweet or predictably flavored. I can't think of something pre-made that comes to mind, but/and then i do have a continuing childhood affection for a rare Lipton iced tea, and a "yeah, I lived in the South" thing for a proper sweet tea.

I'd go on just to insure a certain time window has passed, but there is something kinda screwy going on with my taste, so there isn't surety that anything i say is anything but a reminiscence. Maybe the MRI will show i now will reliably love something easily available, cheap and good for me.
I wonder if anything fits into all three of those categories.

Medium Iced Coffee, unsweetened, room for milk.

I have developed a fondness for Starbucks really big unsweetened Zen iced tea this summer, at least on our warm days.