9 recipes for cold coffee and how to roast it yourself
Cold Brew Coffee has taken the coffee world by storm. But what are the differences between Cold Brew, Cold Drip and Iced Coffee? We give you an overview and also a few of our favourite coffees for hot days. Enjoy.
Temperatures rise and the body screams for caffeine - time for an ice-cold coffee. There are plenty of ways to get a refreshing kick and you can prepare almost all of them yourself at home.
Basically you can distinguish between cold brewed and iced drinks. Cold Brew coffee is made with water at maximum room temperature. Iced coffee is prepared conventionally and then chilled quickly. It is important that you cool down iced drinks quickly so that you can avoid a bitter taste.
1. Cold brewed coffee
Cold Brew differs significantly from the usual coffee in terms of extraction. The water is not heated and so the extraction takes much longer - at least 10 hours compared to about 4 minutes with a hot brewed coffee. But why do we go to all this trouble? Cold Brew tastes very mild, round and has hardly any bitter taste. Coffee extracts about 90% of the flavour elements but only about 15% of the oils and acids in coffee.
Make Cold Brew yourself
It's very easy to make - you just need to prepare it early as it takes a long time to brew. Below you will find our favourite recipe and bean recommendations. With Cold Brew, you can experiment with the amount of coffee and water, the grind and the brewing time:
- approx. 100 grams of coffee in 1 liter of water
- Coarse grinding degree
- Fill into a bottle together and close
- Leave the coffee at room temperature and wait at least 12 hours. Shake carefully from time to time.
- After 12 hours the taste and also the acidity is very pronounced.
- After 24 hours, the coffee is significantly stronger and the characteristic flavours and acidity are superimposed. But the coffee now has a pronounced body.
- Filter (e.g. through a normal filter for filter coffee) and fill into a closable glass
The coffee is now highly concentrated so you can keep it in the fridge for a long time. You drink the cold brew either pure, on ice, with water, with milk (top picture) or with homemade almond milk.
Roasting for Cold Brew
Cold brew needs to be refreshing, so I recommend a fruity coffee. Also, coffee for cold brew should be roasted lighter, as close as possible to the sweet spot where you have the most sweetness in the coffee. As a rule of thumb, I recommend going about 1:15 minutes over the first crack with the roast.
2. Cold drip coffee
Cold Drip is Cold Brew 2.0, which is also made with cold water, but a little more elaborate than Cold Brew. A container is filled with water, ice or a mixture of water and ice and the water drips from the bottom of the container into a coffee filter. The reward for this is a coffee that brings out the flavours even more. Cold Drip coffee was created about 400 years ago. The Dutch often had no electricity on their travels through the colonies, but did not want to do without their coffee under any circumstances. That's why they invented Cold Drip Coffee, which can be stored and taken away for days afterwards.
Make Cold Drip yourself
For the preparation you need an installation which drips the coffee evenly over the coffee powder over a longer period of time. Various providers offer wonderful drippers for this.
Roasting for Cold Drip
Here, too, I recommend a fruity coffee, which you should definitely roast quite lightly.
3. Hot-bloomed cold brew
The preparation remains basically the same, except that you bloom the coffee a little with hot coffee at the beginning. This gives you an even more even extraction of the volatile compounds in the coffee. In concrete terms: the wonderful taste that is contained in your high-quality Single Origin coffee.
4. Nitro Cold Brew
Hyper refreshing! Cold Brew is prepared, put into a keg and nitrogen (nitro) is added. This can easily be connected to a tap and gives a cool, fresh, delicious coffee. It looks like a Guinness being pulled. That alone is so spectacular that you can't miss it.
5. Iced latte
One of my favorites on hot summer days. Easy and quick to prepare and very tasty.
- You take a glass of water and fill it up to about halfway with ice cubes.
- Then milk until the glass is approx. 2/3 full
- Pour a fresh, double espresso over the whole.
- Raise your legs and enjoy
Roasting for Iced Latte
The coffee has to stand up to a lot of milk. If necessary, you can also add a little sugar to the coffee. Therefore, the coffee should have a nutty or chocolaty taste and be roasted quite dark (well into or beyond the second crack).
6. Iced americano
A calorie-free variant of Iced Coffee. And the Iced Americano is also very quick to prepare, so that it can take effect immediately when you need your coffee.
- You take a glass of water and put in 3-4 ice cubes
- A fresh, double espresso on top
- Then top up with water, at least twice as much water as coffee
Roasting for Iced Americano
In contrast to the Iced Latte, the espresso shot does not have to prevail over the milk. You should make the espresso the way you drink it. I usually roast the coffee for espresso in Full City, or until the start of the second crack.
7. Espresso frizzante
On really hot days something of the best! It is prepared almost in the same way as Iced Americano, but with sparkling water.
- You take a glass of water and put in 3-4 ice cubes
- A fresh, double espresso on top
- Then carefully add the sparkling water
A thick layer of foam forms on top and the coffee looks like Nitro Cold Brew. It is therefore essential to have a tasty coffee for the shot, as the taste is fully effective in the foam.
Roasting for Espresso Frizzante
The same applies here as to the Iced Americano. You should definitely try different coffees. Both coffees with a strong roasted flavour and coffees with a pronounced acidity. I like both very much with the frizzante.
8. Japanese iced coffee
In the Japanese Iced Coffee variant you brew the coffee as usual - with the difference that you have already put ice cubes into the pot, which immediately cool down the coffee. This avoids a bitter aftertaste when enjoying coffee later. The preparation with hot water over ice cubes allows the coffee to retain its typical coffee taste. Of course, the best way to make coffee is in the Chemex, but you can make it in any pot.
- Put 300g ice cubes in a Chemex for 6 cups
- Put the filter on the Chemex and 38g of medium ground coffee in the filter
- bloom a little and gently pour a total of 300ml water at 92°C over the coffee
Roasting for japanese iced coffee
For this, you should use a coffee with a pronounced floral or fruity note. Roast the coffee lighter (unless you mix it with milk afterwards), about 1:15 minutes over First Crack.
9. Affogato al caffè
I love him on warm summer evenings in the garden restaurant to round off a fine Italian meal. The preparation couldn't be simpler. Of course, you can experiment with different types of glacé and espresso.
- A scoop of vanilla ice cream in a cup or mug
- Espresso shot about it - done!
- If you want to serve it to friends, bring it separately to the table so they can mix it themselves and enjoy it immediately
Roasting for affogato al caffè
The coffee can be very dark and have pronounced roasted aromas. I recommend a classic espresso blend here (approx. 30% Robusta). Roast beyond the second crack until the beans are somewhat shiny and then leave the finished coffee in a sealed bag for about 7 days.
Always and everywhere!
I don't know how many variations of Iced Coffee we've had on our travels. But I still remember this one exactly.
After a month in a small village in Burma we are back in culinary paradise - Bangkok! As always we lived in our small guesthouse overlooking the river Chao Phraya. We took a few steps towards China Town and there was a friendly elderly lady with a converted Vespa on which she could make toasts with condensed milk and all kinds of coffee and tea. It was hot, I was thirsty and above all I needed a coffee urgently. She recognized this from afar, reached into her cups and then stretched out a small plastic bag with ice cream, instant coffee and sweet condensed milk. Lovely. On some pink plastic stools we watched the hustle and bustle in the alley for a while and toasted a large portion of toast.
More questions? We're here for you.
Do you have any further questions about coffee, roasting or our range? Feel free to call or email me at any time. As a home roaster, SCA trained roaster and member of the Roasters Guild of Europe, I know the equipment and coffees from my daily work:
Phone +41 76 261 97 17 or email ingo[at]roastrebels.com