All About Iced Coffee

I never thought much about how iced coffee was made before I became a barista. Iced coffee has seemed to gain popularity really only in the last ten, fifteen years. I remember days when it wasn't available at every store you passed on the road, including at every gas station, and I probably had my first cup of it in the late 90s or early 2000s.

Iced coffee was traditionally always cold-brewed, but now it's far more popular for hot-brewing machines to be adapted to making iced coffee. Cold-brewed coffee is stronger, less acidic, and much smoother than hot-brewed coffee, but it is also an acquired taste and it's less expensive to adapt an existing machine than it is to purchase one specifically for making iced coffee. Getting two uses out of one machine is more cost productive.

Drinking iced coffee will often pack more of a caffeine punch. Not only is coffee often brewed stronger, so that it doesn't dilute too much when served over white ice, but drinking it cold enables you to drink it faster. Hot-brewed coffee is brewed at 200°. This makes it too hot to drink right away without additions of cream or ice. Originally a summer beverage-- I also remember the days of seasonal availability for iced coffee-- people are now drinking iced coffee all year long.

I, for example, am looking out over snow and sipping my iced coffee as I write this.

What originally started me pondering on iced coffee was Ree Drummond's "The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food From My Frontier." In her intro to her "Perfect Iced Coffee" recipe, she said that "One would think that one could merely pour brewed coffee into a glass full of ice and call it a day... but I find that method extremely flawed." Ya think? I started laughing due to how ridiculous the concept was to me, since I'm not certain how she thinks actual coffee shops do it, but that certainly isn't the way. (I love Ree Drummond. She just didn't think this through, and probably never had reason to. <3) She advocates steeping the grounds and water, then straining the coffee. This is valid, but by no means the preferred method at coffee shops for ye standard iced coffee. I can't imagine that it's a preferred home method either. It seems both time-consuming and labor intensive. She doesn't go into the nitty gritty details. 

I will now proceed to do so.

First, choose your coffee bean and roast. On a side note, while you are scoping out beans, please note that an "espresso roast" is a roast and not a particular kind of bean or even a particular grind. Espresso can be made with any coffee provided that an espresso machine is used. This is not to say that it will be good espresso.

I chose a medium-dark roasted coffee from Rwanda. I rarely advocate dark roasts for much of anything, besides café au lait. Your mileage may vary, and if you plan to add syrups and cream, you may want a darker roast. I recommend purchasing several coffees in small amounts, about 0.25, and trying them to see which makes the best iced coffee for your tastes. It is perfectly all right to grind your coffee at your coffee shop or local store, provided that you only purchase what you can use in the next few days. The consistency and precision of a commercial grinder is far preferable to any blade grinder at home, though you may be perfectly happy if you have a burr grinder. Regardless, the quality of your ground coffee will degrade with time, so use quickly. The Rwanda I use is ground a bit finer than standard, somewhere between a flat-bottom filter grind and an espresso grind.

A regular coffee shop brews the coffee hot and cools it. This extremely simple method is what I do at home. This also means that you have no need for ice, so brew in the standard way. If you plan to serve it with ice anyway, use one extra scoop of coffee per two cups.

Preheat whatever you plan to store your iced coffee in when you refrigerate it. This is especially important if you're storing in glass, otherwise, the glass might crack and you will be out both a pitcher and a batch of iced coffee.

When the coffee is done, pour into your pitcher and let cool on the counter before refrigerating. You may need to make another batch depending on the size of what you're using to contain the coffee. I always put a bit of paper or tape on the container with a date, partially through habit, but it's good to know how long your iced coffee has been sitting in there.

 This is probably the method your coffee shop uses for their standard iced coffee. Cold-brewing is a different procedure entirely. Currently, Kyoto cold-brewed coffee is very popular. The method is imported from Japan (please pronounce this coffee kee-YO-to or KYO-to; kai-O-ta is not even remotely correct) and involves ice and water dripping over grounds slowly, over the course of roughly ten hours. This method is somewhat similar to torture, and the machine costs obscene amounts of money besides. To summarize it a bit, though, ice and water go in the top, you must pre-wet the grounds which will be in the middle of the brewer, put a small filter over them, and prepare to wait. Your best bet for home cold-brewing is to use a French press. Simply prepare coffee for the French press as directed in my post on it. However, use lukewarm water and don't depress the plunger. Instead, after the water is on the coffee, refrigerate overnight. In the morning, depress the plunger. At this point, you can strain it through cheesecloth or handy paper filter if desired. I wouldn't bother, because I like the silt in French press coffee. If you do enjoy it this way, though, as you're pouring the coffee into a container for storage, you can place a coffee filter over the mouth of your container and keep it steady with a rubber band.

If you have to have ice cubes, I recommend coffee ice cubes for coffee brewed hot then cooled and white ice for cold-brewed coffee. Cold-brewed coffee is very strong and needs some dilution. Using coffee ice cubes for regular iced coffee, meanwhile, means you don't suffer that unnecessary dilution.

I drink hot coffee black and iced coffee with cream and often simple syrup. I know many who do the opposite, so try it and see how it goes for you. You're not going to want much more than one ounce of any flavored syrup: these are the proportions that any coffee shop of repute uses, and please accept the advice of professionals. That said, I know people who like two ounces of flavor syrup. These are heathens; please avoid them if you meet one in the street.

Flavored Simple Syrup Recipe

1 cup sugar
3/4 cup hot water
1 tsp vanilla, mint extract, etc.

Mix. Cool. Store. Simple.