How to Make Perfect Iced Coffee at Home
We know that you are looking for ways to get your caffeine dose without dying of heat. If you are looking for an iced coffee maker, we have you covered.
But...what if we tell you that you don’t need to spend a penny on a new iced coffee maker to prepare a tasty iced coffee at home?
How to prepare the best iced coffee?
First things first. There are two ways to prepare iced coffee:
- Cold brew concentrate
- Regular hot coffee (espresso or brewed coffee)
We recommend Cold brew concentrate. It is a stronger concentrate that can be added to any coffee drink for more flavor, character, and a dose of caffeine.
It can be mixed in many combinations including milk, flavored syrups, alcohol, tonic water, or ginger beer among others.
Keep in mind that cold brew is a concentrate, one shot of cold brew is like an espresso shot in terms of flavor concentration (about caffeine amount is another story...we will write another post about caffeine).
If you don’t have cold brew concentrate on hand, the second way to prepare iced coffee is to just brew a regular cup of coffee in the coffee maker that you’re already using and add ice.
**TIP: Use the double amount for brewing your coffee if you want to prepare an iced drink. Ex. 2.5 tbs of ground coffee for a regular hot cup will be 5 tbs for brewing coffee and then adding ice.
If you’re not in a hurry, you can allow the coffee to cool off naturally before adding ice to chill.
Alternatively, you can pull some espresso shots for more flavor intensity in your iced coffee. We recommend using medium or medium-dark roast.
What is the best type of iced coffee maker?
If you still want to get one, you can find a good variety of iced coffee makers in the market to make cold brew. There are two types:
-
Immersion Iced Coffee Maker
-
Cold Drip Iced Coffee Maker
Immersion coffee makers work by letting the coffee brew in cold water for an extended period of time (sometimes eight, twelve, or twenty four hours) before filtering. This creates a more caffeinated concentrate that is usually diluted depending on your recipe.
Cold drip Coffee Makers like the “Cold water drip coffee maker” have three parts: The first part is where you pour cold water and ice. The second part is where you put the coffee grinds. The third part is where the extraction occurs.
Similar to the immersion coffee makers, cold drip coffee makers extract coffee without the use of hot water but with less time, creating flavors that are less bitter and more rich.
The interesting part of this process is that you can control how fast or slow the water is going to drip over the coffee. Play with this speed and your coffee ground selection to experiment with the flavors.
In terms of practicality and budget, immersion coffee makers are the best option. You can do it at home with any jar or plastic container, or get fancy and buy a toddy cold brew coffee maker.
💣Steps to prepare one of our favorite Iced coffee recipes💣
- Use 2 or 3oz of cold brew coffee concentrate (recipe here)
- 10 oz of ginger beer (or ginger ale but we love the flavor profile of ginger beer)
- Ice cubes
- A slice of grapefruit, orange or mint leaves to garnish
Use a long narrow glass, pour the ginger beer over ice cubes. Then add 2 shots of cold brew coffee. For a more interesting visual presentation don’t stir. Finally, place your garnish!
If you make this drink with regular brewed coffee we recommend the following ratio:
- 6oz of brewed coffee (room temperature)
- 6 oz of ginger beer
If you want to switch things up, you can replace the ginger beer with tonic water, mineral water, ginger ale or your preferred milk.
The best part of preparing your cold brew coffee at home is that it can LAST UP TO 14 DAYS in the fridge! Plenty of time to get you through those hot summer days💦
Give it a try and let us know your toughts at the comments!