Generally soda, gatorade, beer, etc are considered better when cold but things like coffee, tea, cocoa, etc are considered best served hot.
Are there biological reasons for this or is it strictly cultural? I know iced coffee is a thing, but I don’t know if people actively enjoy warm soda more than cold soda.
Iced tea is also very popular, and there are cold chocolate drinks.
Soda drinks are better served cold becuuse if they’re heated it would drive out the carbonation and it wouldn’t really be soda anymore. But I think hot ginger ale is a thing.
So short answer, part cultural and part due to the nature of the drink. Basically I think a drink has to either be hot or cold to be enjoyed. Any room temperature drink is going to be less enjoyable.
The exception to this is drinks with complex and subtle taste - fine red wines, some fine beers. But that exception reinforces your basic thesis, because in these cases we don’t want the distraction of the (usually enjoyable) extra sensory stimulation from being hot or cold.
Some beer, say if you’re having a pint of Guinness in a British pub, is served at “cellar temperature” between 50-57 F. Warmer than Americans are used to, but not room temp. And even red wine is not supposed to be served at room temp:
@solost is correct: It’s a combination of both cultural preference and beverage profile.
We have a friend from Indonesia who thinks cold water is absolutely awful. We offered her a water from the fridge and she looked disgusted. She grew up with warm water only. Very cultural and based in learned preference while growing up (when taste preferences are formed), this is similar to the beer example.
As far as other beverages, from my marketing work in the juice & drink business, as general rule the sweeter a beverage is the colder people prefer it. Perception of sweetness is directly related to temperature consumed.
For example warm coke taste sickly sweet (to most people). Coldness and carbonation and reduce that perception.
As a rule, cold tends to reduce some of the other flavour notes as well. If you have a cheap white house wine (like they bring in the 1L jug), you may have noticed that your first glass tastes fine, but after you’ve had it on your table through the meal, the last glass tastes really off? That’s because they’re serving cheap wine so they refrigerate it to just above freezing. That temp hides all the off-notes of the flavour.
Similarly, putting ice in scotch or bourbon can also completely change the taste profile (and water them down too), but I leave that debate to the gourmands.
My “biological reason” is that if I’m drinking gatorade or iced coffee, it’s summer and I’m hot and need something cold to cool me down. If I’m drinking hot chocolate, the reverse is true.
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ETA: Mmmm, bourbon over ice…
One time, when I was a little kid, my family went over to the next-door neighbors’ house for a backyard BBQ. That family had bottles of Dr. Pepper on the table, and one of the bottles bore a label with the serving suggestion that we should try it HOT.
We didn’t, but being presented with the suggestion is one of those weird memories that can stick with a man for half a century.
Some drinks like hot chocolate are better warm because the heat releases more volatile compounds which add to the bouquet.
I first ran across that idea in the movie Blast from the Past. Calvin Webber ws a big fan of it.