Dirty coffee has always existed as a hidden menu in Qian Street, because in Qian Street’s view, dirty coffee is a “special” way to drink latte. Until one day, I overheard a customer talking to his friend. He summed it up by saying, "Dirty uses iced bock milk as the base, and then pours espresso into it to create a layered effect. You don't need to stir it when drinking, just drink it directly."
This guest's popular science about Dirty is generally correct, but the ambiguity lies in whether Dirty must be an ice blog. Open the search engine and enter "dirty coffee", and the index entry also appears "Does dirty coffee have to be iced coffee?", which seems to be not an exception. So Front Street will talk about what Dirty Coffee and Ice Bock are all about.
Dirty coffee is actually a latte with a layered effect. It originated from the popular "dirty food" culture in 2018. It basically uses chocolate powder to create a "very dirty" visual effect. The "dirty" applied to coffee is the visual effect of the dark black espresso liquid slowly penetrating downwards and "contaminating" the white milk.
After the dirty food became obsolete, everyone found that the layered "latte" way of drinking, with the hot espresso flavor first, then the mild milk coffee flavor, and finally the cold lactose sweetness, had a unique flavor, so they kept it. In order to distinguish the stirred way of drinking iced latte, the name Dirty coffee is also retained.
The raw materials of Dirty coffee and iced latte are basically the same, both are espresso + milk, but iced latte will add ice cubes and will not pay attention to the layering effect. Dirty, on the other hand, does not add ice cubes and deliberately creates a layered effect (in order to reconcile the ratio of coffee and milk, some coffee shops will have slightly less milk than latte).
Eisbock is a process that was first used by the Germans to purify (ice distill) beer, making it richer and more alcoholic. The principle is to freeze the beer into ice cubes and then defrost it, using the different melting points of various substances in the beer to remove part of the water (ice), making the beer more concentrated.
At the 2017 World Barista Competition, Canadian baristas were the first to apply ice distillation purification technology to the coffee field. At the 2018 World Barista Competition, Chinese baristas applied icebock technology to milk, increasing the original milk concentration from 11-12% to 20-21%. After the game, some domestic cafes also launched iced Bock latte.
In fact, the process of making icebock milk is not very complicated. In the early days, coffee shops used to make icebock milk by hand. The process was as follows: first freeze the milk, then make a small opening in the milk carton, invert it on the container, and let the milk ice thaw. Since ice (solid H₂O) melts the slowest, when 1L of milk ice melts to produce 0.5L of milk, the rest can be discarded. The melted milk will be Ice Bock milk that is twice as thick as the original milk.
Icebock milk is thicker and richer than ordinary milk, with more obvious lactose sweetness and a taste similar to light cheese.
Dirty coffee and icebock milk were born very close to each other, but they have always developed in parallel without much overlap. What really made the two connected was the emergence of icebock produced by industrial assembly lines in 2020. The original icebock milk was hand-made from fresh milk in coffee shops. The output was low, the cost was high, and storage was difficult, so it has never been popularized. The production of industrial assembly lines solved this problem, and the manufacturer's product positioning was to be supplied to coffee shops. Therefore, after several promotions, Bingbok milk became popular.
Since Iced Bock is a purified version of milk, it can also be used to make milk coffees such as latte, cappuccino, and Australian white. So why Dirty coffee and Iced Bock milk? The reason is that Dirty coffee goes well with ice blogs.
Other milk coffees are fully blended with coffee and milk, so they pay attention to the combination of coffee flavor and milk flavor. Iced milk will overwhelm the flavor and cover up the taste of coffee. In the form of Dirty coffee, the coffee flavor will not be masked by the sweet milk flavor.
The collision between rich coffee and rich milk also makes the taste of dirty coffee richer. The more important point is that it is easier to create a dirty layered effect using iced Bock milk, and the drinking period is longer.
Of course, using iceberg in Dirty coffee is just an option, not a necessity. Coffee shops will also pair different milks based on the flavor characteristics of the coffee beans. For example, I saw a coffee shop on Qian Street that was flavor-oriented. Different coffee beans were used to make dirty, and the corresponding milk choices were also different. Some coffee shops have different understandings. Ordinary milk is too watery and weak, while iced milk is too thick and too sweet. So the milk they use to make Dirty is 2 parts regular milk + 1 part iced milk.
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
