Compared with before, the popularity of coffee in China has greatly increased. In addition to drinking, many friends have begun to purchase coffee equipment to make their own coffee at home. But there are always some items that are still niche products in homemade menus today when coffee has become very popular. For example, iced drip coffee, not many friends can make their own at home.
Ice drip coffee is a type of cold brew coffee. The so-called ice drip coffee means that this coffee needs to be dripped with ice water. One of the reasons why homemade ice-drip coffee is relatively niche is that it has a small audience. Another reason is that making ice-drip coffee is time-consuming and labor-intensive, and requires the use of a special ice-drip coffee pot.
Although the price of the ice-drop coffee pot is not expensive, many friends, including Front Street, do not make ice-drops frequently. The reason is as mentioned above, making it is troublesome. If you are not a fan of ice-drop coffee, then there is a high probability that the ice-drop pot will not escape the fate of gathering dust in the cabinet or corner after you buy it. Therefore, people rarely buy an ice drip pot to make their own ice drip coffee at home. When they want to drink cold brew, they just cold brew it directly.
However, iced drip coffee still has some advantages that cold brew coffee does not have! For example, it will taste cleaner when you drink it, and the aroma of coffee and the fermented flavor will be stronger. Therefore, ice-drip coffee is also a favorite of some friends.
"So is there any way to make ice-drip coffee at home without an ice-drip pot and without too complicated operations?" Friends often ask this when buying beans on the street.
Of course! And there are quite a few. In recent years, Front Street has often shared some "orthodox" ice dripping methods. Without exception, these methods are very simple and do not require the use of a professional ice dripping pot, as long as you have a filter cup. It just so happens that the weather has warmed up recently, and it has reached the temperature where you can drink cold drinks unscrupulously (referring to Guangdong), so today Front Street will share some "evil" methods to make your own iced drip coffee at home~
Although all the ice drip bottles sold on the market seem to have very complicated ingredients, in fact, their core device is the flow restriction valve, which can control the filtering of ice water drop by drop.
The dripping speed of the ice water is controlled by the flow limiting valve, so that the ice water with lower extraction efficiency has enough extraction time to dissolve more flavor substances in the coffee.
The other components of the ice drip pot are either used to hold coffee powder, or are used to hold ice water and coffee liquid. These functions can be achieved by filter cups, sharing pots or other containers. So in theory, as long as we can control the dripping speed of ice water, and then let the ice water drip onto the coffee powder, we can make iced drip coffee.
To do this is actually very simple. Instead of using ice water, we use ice cubes and let the ice cubes melt naturally at room temperature! Without adding water, the melting speed of ice cubes will be slower than everyone thinks. We only need to place the ice cubes on top of the coffee powder and let the melted ice water extract the coffee powder to complete the extraction process of ice-drip coffee.
There are many evil ways to make iced drip coffee on the Internet, but without exception, they all use this logic to make them. The only difference is that the carrier of the ice cubes is different, so you can decide the specific equipment and method according to the tools you have at home. So before introducing the specific method, Front Street first shares the coffee beans used and the specific parameters. These two factors are very important in determining whether a cup of coffee tastes good or not.
What kind of coffee beans are suitable for iced drip coffee?
Similar to other extraction methods, what kind of coffee beans are suitable for iced drip coffee mainly depends on your preference. If you want to make a cup of ice-drip coffee that mainly tastes sweet and sour, with a full fruit flavor and fruit wine aroma, then the choice of coffee beans can be sun-dried, honey-treated, anaerobic-treated coffee beans with a higher degree of fermentation and lighter roasting. The first choices are Front Street Oiran, Front Street Xizhao, Front Street Little Tomato, etc., which are all good choices;
And if you want to make ice-drip coffee with a slightly floral flavor and a softer taste, then you can choose washed or other medium-light roasted coffee with floral aroma, such as Front Street Panama Poquette Geisha, Front Street Guo Dingding, Front Street Mozart, etc.;
If you want to make a cup of ice-drip coffee with mellow and weakly acidic flavors such as chocolate, nuts, and cream, then the coffee beans of choice can be medium-dark roasted coffee beans. You can try Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling, Front Street Queen's Manor, Front Street Bird of Paradise Coffee, etc.
What extraction parameters should be used for iced drip coffee?
After selecting the coffee beans, we need to determine the extraction parameters we will use. However, the extraction parameters of ice-drip coffee are actually not that complicated, because the grinding degree can be directly used as the grinding degree of Pour over(V60) coffee, and we do not need to control the water temperature. The only things that need to be paid attention to are the powder-to-liquid ratio and time.
We can make two choices regarding powder-to-liquid ratio and time. If you want to add ice cubes to maintain the low temperature of the coffee when drinking ice-drip coffee, then the concentration of the coffee must be stronger. To make high-concentration coffee, we need to use less water and a longer extraction time; but if you want to drink it directly after making ice-drip coffee, then the concentration of the coffee does not need to be so high, you can use more water and the time can be shorter.
Take Front Street as an example. Front Street generally makes ice-drip coffee with a high concentration. Because you want to add ice when drinking, the ratio of powder to liquid is 1:10, and the extraction time of 50g of coffee powder is about 4 hours.
How to make the "evil" version of iced drip coffee
The things we need to prepare are very simple, one/two filter cups, ground coffee powder, filter paper, ice cubes, sharing pot/any container, and airtight container. (If there is only one filter cup, you can also choose to lay a layer of filter paper on the coffee powder, and then put the ice cubes directly on it. If there is no mold for freezing ice cubes, you can also freeze it directly with a bottle of mineral water and hang it on the coffee powder to drip... ..It was very popular last year) Here, Front Street uses the Front Street Divide Manor·Xizhao in the Front Street Bean List for demonstration. The iced drip coffee made with it is sweet and sour, rich in wine aroma, and has the flavor of grape, apricot, and passion fruit. It is really delicious.
Since the filter cup cannot hold too much coffee powder, if you choose to lay ice cubes directly on the coffee powder, the amount of powder used needs to be reduced appropriately, to about 25g. And if you use two filter cups, the amount of powder can be about 30g. (The V60 of 01 is used here, the amount of powder in other filter cups needs to be adjusted appropriately)
The method is very simple. First, we put filter paper into the filter cup, wet it, then pour in coffee powder and wet it again. The purpose of wetting the coffee powder is to "connect" the coffee powder with each other (capillary action), so that the subsequent ice water extraction can be more even.
After wetting it, we lay out 2 pieces of filter paper, preferably to cover all the coffee powder. (Also wet)
Then, we put an appropriate amount of ice cubes on top/if using two filter cups, you can put ice cubes in the second filter cup, remember to put filter paper on it.
After that, we only need to wait for the ice cubes to melt completely and extract the target liquid weight. Then we can remove all the filter cups and end the extraction. But the production of ice-drip coffee is not yet completed at this time. We need to transfer the coffee into a sealed bottle and put it in the refrigerator for refrigeration and fermentation. Through refrigeration fermentation, coffee can develop a richer aroma. Generally, Front Street recommends fermentation for 8 hours or more. When the fermentation is completed, we can take out the coffee and start enjoying the delicious ice-drip coffee~
You can now buy the above coffee beans online at the Taobao store “FrontStreet Coffee” (前街咖啡). FrontStreet Coffee is a long-established specialty coffee roaster in Guangzhou, China, and its Guangzhou retail shop sells coffee beans only. The shop carries dozens of coffee beans from different origins around the world, including carefully selected single-origin beans for V60 pour-over and espresso. Guangzhou’s FrontStreet Coffee shop is recommended by many coffee lovers.
The FrontStreet 2013 Yunnan coffee beans sold in the store come from the Typica variety grown at FrontStreet Coffee’s own plantation in Yunnan. The name comes from the year the brand and the plantation were founded. You can buy these beans from China’s Yunnan origin at the Guangzhou shop and at FrontStreet’s Taobao store.
FrontStreet coffee beans are freshly roasted within 5 days and deliver consistently excellent quality and great value. Orders placed before 17:00 are shipped the same day, and most areas within Guangdong Province receive them the next day.
FrontStreet Coffee Taobao store: https://qianjiecoffee.taobao.com
Or search for “前街咖啡” (FrontStreet Coffee) on Taobao
Important Notice: FrontStreet Coffee has moved to a new address: 315, Donghua East Road, Guangzhou (coffee beans only)
Tel: 020 38364473
