When the church was new, scriptures were regularly added to the doctrine and covenants. These revelations are considered doctrine and part of the LDS cannon. In 1833 D&C 89 was revealed and in verse 2 it says "To be sent greeting, not by commandment or constraint". D&C wasn't revealed as a commandment everyone needed to follow it was revealed as a suggestion that would result in blessings. The early saints considered it as a suggestion and many didn't follow it. Joseph didn't take it too seriously, he was regularly seen around Nauvoo drunk [1]. He even had wine brought to him in Carthage [2]. Brigham Young owned and ran a brewery in Utah [3]. In 1852 the church did vote on abstaining completely from alcohol and coffee, etc, and depending on which source you read it either passed or didn't pass [4]. If it actually passed then why wasn't the revelation modified or another revelation added to the D&C so that we could know for sure today what the commandment is? As far as we can tell, D&C 89 is optional and "hot drinks" are excluded, so cold coffee should be fine and beer (mild barley drinks) is fine, while "hot drinks" and "strong drinks" are prohibited. We can either listen to God's words as written down in the D&C or we can listen to the voices of men who claim to know God's will but didn't bother following God's outlined procedure of writing it down and approving it by common consent. So this seems to leave us with the same thing the Jew's in Jesus's time had to deal with. The Pharisee's liked making rules so that they had a bar they could use to judge someone's righteousness with. While Jesus was on the earth the bible shows us that the group of people he appeared to like the least were the Pharisees because of their hypocrisy and how they put them selves between people and God. How is that any different from today? We have God's written word which tells us the WOW is optional but then we have men who have put themselves between us and God that tell us we have to keep the commandments their way. If Jesus hated the Pharisees because of their rules and regulations when he was on earth, why would he start acting like them after his death? A suggestion seems more in line with the Gospel Jesus taught, a rule seems less like what the Bible tells us Jesus did. Jesus said the greatest commandments were to love God and love your neighbor. Loving God certainly involves living the way he want's you too but how often will that way be exactly the same for two different people? 10 times for sure, but beyond the 10 commandments does God really want us guiding our lives by hundreds of extra rules?
A God that doesn't like confusion would make it easy for us to know what he expects, he would either leave D&C 89 as is where cold coffee and beer is ok but hot chocolate isn't, or He would give us a new revelation that would replace D&C 89 and he would have had it voted on and added to the cannon like all other scripture was. By not doing that, new members who just read the scriptures wouldn't know coffee isn't approved, they have to be told by people and every person seems to understand D&C 89 in their own way.
[1] https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-from-parley-p-pratt-3-may-1844/1 to be fair, this document is saying someone is accusing JS of drunkenness along with swearing and having a few extra young wives, however, we know JS did have extra wives so why include a list of things unless they are all true?
[4] https://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/digital/collection/MStar/id/37435/rec/14 pg. 35 passed, https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwj_o67H1aTxAhWFyp4KHYR_BrcQFjAOegQIChAE&url=https%3A%2F%2Fscholarsarchive.byu.edu%2Fcgi%2Fviewcontent.cgi%3Farticle%3D4086%26context%3Dbyusq&usg=AOvVaw13rdUefxMfSMmRn0aoDJDw pg. 8 didn't pass
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