For more knowledge about specialty coffee, please follow the WeChat public account: FrontStreet Coffee
Our four common types of iced coffee are iced Americano, iced hand brew, cold brew and iced drip coffee. Some friends may not be familiar with these four types of iced coffee, so Front Street will try to explain their characteristics and differences from several aspects.
Extraction method
From the perspective of extraction methods, iced Americano and iced Pour over(V60) coffee are formed by rapidly cooling the prepared hot coffee with ice; cold extraction and ice-drip coffee beans are formed by using cold water to extract the entire process.
Iced Americano uses an espresso machine to extract espresso, and then adds an appropriate amount of ice water to cool down and dilute the coffee. It is recommended to use the Front Street Italian series for Americano coffee beans. They are all medium-to-dark roasted, with a balanced taste and rich aroma. They include butter-flavored Front Street Classic Blend, nut-flavored Front Street Boutique Blend, caramel-flavored Front Street Commercial Blend, and chocolate-flavored Front Street Dark Cocoa.
How to make iced American style: Grind 20g of Front Street Classic Blend coffee powder, extract 40g of coffee liquid in 25 to 33 seconds according to the powder-to-liquid ratio of 1:2, prepare a 300ml glass, fill it with 90g of ice cubes and 180g of drinking water, pour the extracted espresso, stir and drink.
The iced American style made from the classic coffee beans of Front Street can be felt in the mouth with rich layers. The slight flavor of roasted chestnuts and nuts is accompanied by the smoothness of the cream. It is ice-cold and mellow. It is very enjoyable to drink in summer.
Ice hand-brew is made by first brewing hot coffee (slightly stronger than normal) by hand, and then adding ice cubes to cool down and dilute it. It is suitable for making from various single-origin beans. Beginners can buy medium-light roasted coffees such as the fruit tea-flavored Front Street Butterfly, the rich fermented Front Street Mozart, and the fresh and sour sweet Front Street Oiran to make iced hand-brew. They have high flavor recognition, so they have a stronger error tolerance during extraction.
The detailed production method is as follows. Here Front Street takes the medium-light roasted Front Street fruit dices as an example. The high-concentration and high-extraction ice brewing parameters are as follows:
Amount of powder: 15g
10 times hot water: 150 grams
5 times the amount of ice: 75 grams
Water temperature: 92°C
Grinding degree: No. 20 screen pass rate 83% (EK43s scale 9, C40 scale 22)
Filter bowl: Hario V60
Technique: three-stage
First, put 75g of ice cubes into the lower pot, then pour 15g of ground coffee powder into the filter cup and pat it flat. In the first section, we use a small water flow of 3ml/s to inject 30g of hot water in a small circle from the center outward and steam for 30 seconds; after 30 seconds, inject the second section of 60g of water in the same way. Be careful not to raise the liquid level too high, which may easily cause insufficient coffee extraction; when the coffee liquid is about to dry up, pour all the remaining 60g of hot water at a flow rate of 3ml/s to ensure that the extraction time falls within 1 minute 50 seconds to 2 minutes.
Cold brew coffee is made by soaking coffee powder in cold water, usually for a long time, and then filtering out the coffee grounds before drinking. The preparation method is as follows.
Taking Front Street Strawberry Candy as an example, when making cold brew coffee, a cold brew pot with a capacity of 1L is used, 60g of strawberry candied coffee beans are prepared, and ground into the size of fine sugar (China No. 20 standard sieve sieve throughput is 80%), the specific thickness is as follows. Then, pour the ground coffee powder into the pot, pour 600g of drinking water at a powder-to-water ratio of 1:10, stir evenly with a long spoon, seal it, and put it in the refrigerator for 8 to 12 hours. When the soaking is complete, take out the cold brew pot, stir it thoroughly with a spoon again, and then pour it into the filter paper to separate the residue until all the coffee liquid is filtered out, and the cold brew is completed.
Ice-drip coffee uses ice water to be dripped drop by drop into the coffee powder layer to extract the coffee liquid. It generally takes a long time to make.
Ice-drip coffee cannot be drunk immediately after dripping, because it still needs to be refrigerated for several hours to ferment! Through fermentation, ice dripping can produce a richer aroma and excellent taste, so ice dripping is very suitable for making coffee with a fermentation and fruity aroma. For home production, Front Street Strawberry Candy, Front Street Blackberry, and Front Street Hija are the first choices. This is why ice dripping coffee needs to be made 1 to 2 days in advance.
The specific production method is as follows:
The flow rate is the same as that of hand brewing, but the flow rate of ice droplets is calculated in terms of drops per second. The slower the flow rate, the longer the total time required, and over-extraction is prone to occur. Front Street generally uses 7 drops every 10 seconds for extraction, and everyone can adjust the flow rate according to their own preferences. The ratio of powder to liquid is 1:10. Since the ice-drip coffee produced by Front Street is diluted with ice cubes before drinking, a higher concentration is used. If you make it at home, you can use 1:12-1:14 for extraction. Front Street makes ice dripping by grinding 60g of coffee beans into powder, placing a round filter paper in the powder cup, pouring in the coffee powder, and finally placing a piece of filter paper on the surface and moistening the coffee powder with water, which can save drip filtering time and avoid uneven extraction. Fill the upper pot with a mixture of ice and water, that is, ice and water 1:1, and extract a total of 600g of coffee liquid.
Production time
In terms of production time, iced Americano and iced Pour over(V60) coffee are relatively fast and only take a few minutes to make. Cold brew coffee and iced drip coffee take longer to make. Generally, the production time of cold brew coffee is about 12 hours, and the production time of iced drip coffee is 6-8 hours.
Ease of production
For home users, Pour over(V60) ice coffee and cold brew coffee are relatively simple to make. There are no high requirements for the choice of equipment for cold brew coffee. All you need is a sealed bottle. Ice hand brewing equipment is also more friendly to the people, and generally if you have the habit of making coffee at home, you will have hand brewing coffee equipment.
The espresso machine required for iced Americano and the equipment required for iced drip coffee are slightly more expensive.
Differences in flavor and taste
Let me first explain here, whether coffee is sour or bitter, whether it is floral and fruity or nutty and chocolatey, mainly depends on the flavor of coffee beans used, and the extraction method has less influence. The iced coffee produced by different methods has different taste expressions. These expressions are the differences in comparison. No matter which method is used, the taste produced is inseparable from the basic flavor and tonality of the coffee beans.
The flavor characteristics of iced Americano are generally light, refreshing, and usually show the most basic flavor of coffee beans. The liquid is relatively turbid.
The characteristics of iced Pour over(V60) coffee are clean and refreshing taste, easy to highlight the main flavor of coffee beans, and the liquid is transparent and bright.
Cold brew coffee is characterized by less bitterness, balanced flavor and high sweetness. The taste will be thicker than iced Pour over(V60) coffee. The liquid performance is slightly lower than that of ice Pour over(V60) coffee.
Iced coffee is characterized by rich fermented flavors, such as wine. With the same beans, the bitterness of iced drip coffee is higher than that of the other three iced coffees, and the taste is also better than the other three iced coffees.
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
