I have a confession to make: I don’t mind Tim Hortons coffee.
Does Tim Hortons make excellent coffee? No. Do they make good coffee? Also no. Do they make coffee that tastes a little bit like one of the employees accidentally left all the freshly brewed pots underneath an idling exhaust pipe in the parking lot for a few hours and the other employees just decided to bring them in and serve them anyway because surely no one would really notice the difference? Of course they do.
But sometimes I’m just in the mood for a $2 cup of coffee handed to me by a stranger who visibly hates me, and for that, Tim Hortons simply cannot be beaten.
If you refer to a Tim Hortons employee as a ‘barista’ they take you out behind the dumpster and stone you to death with stale TimBits.
So if you’re a Canadian, an American in a border town, or a tourist looking to sample the sweet nectar of the north, here’s what your choice in Tim Hortons beverage says about you.
Large Double-Double
The large double-double – named because it contains two creams and two sugars – is the quintessential Canadian beverage. It’s just enough coffee to get you through the day, with just enough cream and sugar to disguise the fact that the coffee tastes like it was filtered through a used hockey jersey.
Ordering a large double-double tells the world that you’re a down-to-earth Canadian who enjoys down-to-earth Canadian things, like Corner Gas, butter tarts, and knowing a lot of people named Gordon.
Extra-Large Double-Double
Canadians don’t get to experience the simple American delight of ordering an extra-large beverage and having a small above-ground swimming pool handed to us through a drive-thru window, but the respectable 710ml (24oz) Tim Hortons extra-large is the closest we can come.
Ordering an extra-large double-double tells the world that you’re a person who values quantity over quality. You’re willing to endure the slight “old snow tire” aftertaste of your morning bucket of coffee in exchange for that extra boost of caffeine, because you signed little Jacques up for hockey three years ago without realizing how often you would need to leave the house at four thirty in the morning to drive your beloved offspring to a hockey tournament and you’ve bitterly regretted that decision ever since.
Classic Iced Capp
An Iced Capp is a Canadian delicacy that combines the core concept of a Starbucks Frappuccino with the execution of a 7/11 Slurpee machine. If you enjoy the blended coffee beverages available at other coffee chains but find yourself wishing “I wish this varied wildly in consistency from a solid block of ice to a watery mess of liquid coffee with no way to predict what I’ll get each time”, the Iced Capp is the beverage for you.
Since Tim Hortons requires you to specify exactly how much cream and sugar you want in most of their beverages so they can mix it behind the counter, ordering an Iced Capp sends a clear message – namely, that you are probably ordering a drink for someone else and you have no idea what they want. The noble Iced Capp might not be everyone’s favourite drink, but it is nobody’s least favourite and it requires no customization, making it the perfect beverage for the co-worker who told you to “just get me whatever”. If Greg from the office didn’t want to drink 400 calories of heavy cream at nine in the morning, he should have texted you his order faster.
Caramel Iced Capp
The standard-issue Iced Capp contains roughly enough sugar to bring a medium-sized horse back from the dead. For people who feel that this is still not quite enough sugar for one beverage, there is the Caramel Iced Capp.
Ordering a Caramel Iced Capp tells the world that you have seen the limits of the human body, and you’ve kicked dust at them as you sped right past. Sometimes you slip your pancreas clean out of your body and slam it in your car door a few times, just to remind it who is in charge. You are just one gram of sugar away from meeting God, and when you do, you will demand to speak to his manager.
London Fog
Originating in Vancouver, the London Fog is a popular tea-based beverage that combines Earl Grey tea with vanilla syrup and steamed milk. Going to Tim Hortons for a London Fog is like getting a Costco sheet cake for your wedding: I respect the frugality, but I do hope that you’re managing your expectations.
Being the only person in a Tim Hortons line to order a specialty tea beverage instead of bleating out a combination of creams and sugars tells the assembled staff and patrons of Tim Hortons that you are not truly one of their kind. You are no mere member of the lumpen proletariat, clutching a coffee that tastes a little bit like potting soil. You have elite taste in hot beverages, picked up from your days at an elite university like Queens or McGill. Did you know people call McGill “the Harvard of the North?” You don’t call it that, but you definitely want people to know that other people do.
“Just Plain Coffee”
At every Tim Hortons across Canada, you will find at least one person – usually an older person – who loudly insists that they just want a plain, regular coffee. They don’t know when people started ruining good old coffee with all this “cream” and “sugar” nonsense (roughly five hundred years ago, if you’re curious), but they don’t want any part of it.
Announcing that you want a regular coffee – just plain old coffee, none of those fancy coffee drinks – sends an important message: you’re a simple person from a simple time when everything was better. Back in your day, the only people who spoke enough French to order a “café au lait” were militant Quebec separatists, and that’s the way everybody liked it. You know that Sir John A. Macdonald would not approve of what this country has become, because you personally sat next to him in junior high school.
Frozen Lemonade
Every so often, the good people at Tim Hortons get tired of trying to find new combinations of cream and flavoured syrups to disguise the fact that their coffee tastes a little bit like the underside of a snowmobile, and invent a truly excellent beverage that their coffee has never come in contact with. The Frozen Lemonade is one such beverage. It tastes like lemons and contains enough sugar to candy-coat the entire moon. Excellent stuff, no notes.
However, most Canadians do not go to Tim Hortons for enjoyment – we go to Tim Hortons because we need their reasonably-priced caffeine for survival, and because we need a disposable cup to hold up sheepishly as we stroll in ten minutes late to work. If you’re ordering a Frozen Lemonade, the most likely explanation is that you are nine years old and you did an excellent job at your hockey or ringette practice today. Great job out there, sport. You earned it.
And for those of you who are currently getting ready to sneak into my house in the dead of night and smother me with a honey cruller because I insulted your favourite beverage, please know one thing: this is a joke. Obviously, I don’t really judge people for what they order in the Tim Hortons drive-thru.
But if I find out you like Dunkin Donuts more than Timmies, Lord help me, I will judge you so hard.
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For more of my red-hot takes on Canadian culture, please enjoy this handy guide for Americans trying to escape their national woes by moving to Canada.
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