There are two ways to make iced coffee, ice drip and cold brew. Ice drops require professional equipment, and it takes a fixed amount of time to adjust the dropping speed, which is a costly method.
Cold extraction is to soak coffee powder in cold water for a long time. The container can be a simple mineral water bottle or a professional cold extraction bottle. Relatively speaking, the investment will be less, and the operation is relatively simple. You only need to control the coffee beans The amount of grinding, the amount of water, and the length of soaking will do.
As for which coffee beans are suitable for cold brew coffee, I believes that the single-origin beans marked for hand-brew use on the market are suitable. From light floral and fruity Geisha to deep bittersweet Mandheling, all of them have a special flavor when made by cold extraction.
Best Coffee Beans for Cold Brew
We would like to give you some recommendations. If you want to try a more refreshing feeling, you can choose light-roasted washed coffee beans, such as washed Yirgacheffe, washed Geisha, and Guatemala Flora coffee beans. If you want a sense of juice and sweetness, you can choose light-roasted natural coffee beans, such as Oiran coffee, Kenyan coffee, and natural Geisha.
If you want a special flavor, you can choose specially processed coffee beans, such as Honduras Shirley coffee, Costa Rica Mozart coffee, Colombia's Rose Valley, and Huayueye. If you don't like sour coffee, but only like a balanced "coffee taste", you can choose Papua's bird of paradise and Costa Rica's tara beads.
Usually, they buy a pack of coffee beans and pour them by hand when the coffee beans are fresh, and the beans are stored for one month before brewing. Use it for cold brew.
This approach has certain merits, because when the coffee beans are too fresh, they contain too much carbon dioxide, which is not conducive to the extraction of coffee substances in cold water. However, after about 20 days of storage, the gas will be discharged almost the same, but the flavor of the cold extraction will be richer.
It is not recommended to leave the coffee beans for too long, because as the gas is released, the coffee flavor will also dissipate, and the cold brew coffee will not taste very good. Generally, it is better to control coffee beans within 45 days. (But there are exceptions. we tried a cold-extracted 90+ Geisha that was baked for 3 months, and the flavour did not decrease.)
As for the cold extraction method, there are many methods that can achieve a good taste, and we will introduce one of them for your reference.
The container can be a mineral water bottle or a glass bottle, as long as it has a sealed lid. The grind of coffee powder will be slightly finer than that of manual brewing, which is about 85% of the thickness of the No. 20 sieve.
Cold Brew Coffee Grind
Based on 50 grams of coffee powder, put the coffee powder into a glass bottle, then add 400 ml of room temperature water and 200 grams of hard ice cubes (if there is no ice cubes, you can add cold water instead), the ratio of powder to water is 1: 12. Then use a stirring rod to stir the coffee powder and water evenly, then seal it and place it in a refrigerator.
The cold extraction time is recommended to be controlled within 12-24 hours. The longer the time, the stronger the taste of the coffee, but it is not recommended to exceed 24 hours. After refrigerating, you can use filter paper to filter out the coffee grounds. we recommends putting the clean coffee liquid in a bottle and refrigerating it for 4 hours before drinking, so that the cold brew coffee will be more fragrant.