How to Brew Iced Coffee?
Iced coffee is often overlooked and it's a great way to brew cold coffee at home. Iced coffee is also probably the fastest way to brew cold and refreshing coffee drink at home as you don't need 16 hours of brewing like in cold brew or an espresso machine like in iced latte. In iced coffee a part of the brewing water is replaced with ice placed in the decanter and the coffee otherwise brewed like pour over filter coffee. Let's dig deeper into iced coffee!
Iced coffee is popular especially in Japan where many cafés brew coffee with pour over and you can always choose the coffee to be either hot or cold. Iced coffee shouldn't be mixed cold brew coffee or iced latte as it's a bit different drink. In cold brew you only use cold water to brew the coffee and on the other hand in iced latte you use espresso as the coffee base. In iced coffee a part of the brewing water is replaced with ice placed in the decanter which then melts diluting the coffee as you brew it in top of the ice. So the trick when brewing iced coffee is to make the coffee stronger than usual filter coffee but the challenge is that the coffee will then under-extract. Read more about extraction.
Recipe for iced coffee
In this recipe we replace 33% of the brew water with ice.
You will need:
- coffee (beans)
- a scale
- pour over device (such as Hario v60, Kalita Wave or Origami Dripper)
- decanter
- hot water
- ice cubes
Recipe: 30 grams of coffee - 335 grams of brewing water - 165 grams of ice
- Boil your brewing water - let it sit for a minute if you don't have a thermometer in the kettle.
- Measure your coffee and grind it (grind the coffee just a bit finer than you would normally grind for a pour over - this will extract the coffee more).
- Pour hot water through the filter to wet the paper but remember not to do this on top of the decanter.
- Add the ice to the decanter, place your pour over on top of it and place them on the scale.
- Add the ground coffee to the filter and tare the scale.
- Bloom the coffee. Use 90 grams of water (three times the dry weight of ground coffee). Bloom for 30-45 sec.
- Pour more water with a rotating movement on the grounds until the scale shows 200 grams. Let steep for 45 sec.
- Use the rest of the water to first clean up the brim of the filter and then pour the rest of the water on the grounds with a rotating movement until the scale shows 335 grams.
- Brew time should be around 3 mins.
Once the brew time is up, all the ice should have melted in the decanter. Serve the iced coffee with lots of ice and enjoy!
Ps. if you want to have your iced coffee with milk, use less brewing water (~280 grams) and grind finer to extract enough.
