It's another scorcher here in New York City. Actually, a scorcher might imply that things are burning... and I'm not sure anything can actually dry out enough to catch on fire in this swampy air. Maybe I should say it's another steamer here in New York City.
Hot weather calls for cold drinks, and as I promised earlier this week, I'd like to mention some of the ways you can get a nice cup of iced coffee.
First off, there's the method that I mentioned on Monday. You can just brew hot coffee and then cool it down using ice or refrigeration. This has the benefit of not requiring and special equipment, planning or even thought. Hence your humble host using it on a hot Monday morning, natch.
To brew a nice cup of cold coffee using hot methods, I prefer using a French press. French press is easy to updose with. That means you can make an extra strong pot without ruining the sweetness or acidity in the coffee. Also, the high particulate matter in press pots lends itself well to mixing with ice, in my personal preference.
I make a French press at about 140% strength of my normal brew. I use the same grind setting and just increase the "throw weight." As soon as it's done brewing I pour it directly over a large glass filled to the top with ice. There should be enough ice to cool down the brew all in one go. Voila! Easy, drinkable iced coffee.
The thing to avoid when making hot coffee iced, is cooling the brew slowly, like in a fridge. The problem is that brewing coffee hot causes the formation and extraction of some very volatile organic acids. These acids are a essential part of the flavor of coffee, but they break down very easily. If you let coffee just sit out and slowly get cold, it will break down into some very bitter and quinic (metallic-tasting) compounds. This is the problem with most iced coffee out there.
To really get a nice cup of iced coffee, try cold brewing it. There are a few different methods for cold brewing. First of all, "cold brew" is a bit of a misnomber. Most of these are really "room temperature brew." You don't need to do this at 33 degrees to make it work. Essentially the difference with all of these methods is that they are not hot. Those acids I mentioned never fully formed, and you therefore don't have to worry about them breaking down and tasting nasty! Cold brew coffee is generally less complex than hot coffee, but also smoother and easy to drink.
Because you aren't using hot water, you have to dramatically increase the dwell time to pull out enough coffee taste. Cold methods are designed to keep the grounds with the coffee for a long time.
The first method I got to know well, at Victrola, was toddy. Toddy, like it implies, gives the coffee grounds a "bath". You put the coffee in a muslin bag and then soak them in a big bucket of water overnight. A sweet, mellow brew results, which you can then store in the fridge.
At Ost Café where I work sometimes, they use Filtron, which brews a concentrate through a special filter, which you can then store and mix with water when it's time to drink. Very nice!
There's also slow-drip method, which I don't have a link to, but which I saw at Blue Bottle in San Francisco. It's a long glass column with coffee grounds inside. Water drips very slowly onto the top of the column of coffee. Meanwhile, at the bottom of the column, after it's long slow journey, the coffee drips slowly into a recepticle. It makes for an intense, liqueur-like brew. Very delicious and different.
I haven't even mentioned iced espresso drinks yet... maybe next week. I'm sure it will be hot enough...
What kind of iced coffee do you like? Have I forgotten anything?
Hey Daniel, I just wanted to mention that I'm glad you took the blog to a daily posting frequency! It's great to have something new and different related to coffee every day from such an expert on the subject.
Posted by: Daniel | August 22, 2009 at 06:39 AM
Thanks, Daniel!
Keep droppping by.
Posted by: Daniel Humphries | August 22, 2009 at 09:24 AM
Hi Daniel, thanks for posting on Iced Coffee, I saw it during my google search. I'm actually wondering how one might chill espresso for making iced mochas/macchiatos/lattes and such. Right now I just do an ice-bath with some reusable ice cubes but I didn't know if there might be some simple devices that I could use for quickly chilling espresso on the spot instead of having to make an ice bath. Would you share your thoughts on ice espresso drinks and how you'd create them?
Thanks,
Scott
Posted by: Scott | September 07, 2009 at 10:42 PM