The Difference Between Cold Drip and Cold Brew Coffee: Flavor Characteristics and Taste Assessment of Iced Americano

Summer is always the season when iced coffee drinks are particularly popular. Currently, FrontStreet Coffee's three most popular cold coffee drinks are: Iced Americano, Cold Brew Coffee, and Ice Drip Coffee. These three have different extraction methods, resulting in different flavors and textures. Some people prefer ice drip coffee, while others prefer cold brew coffee. FrontStreet Coffee has summarized their respective characteristics: Iced Americano is the fastest with the lightest coffee flavor, while cold brew and ice drip take longer but have richer flavors.

Iced Coffee

Iced coffee is actually what we commonly call Iced Americano, referring to cold coffee drinks made by quickly extracting coffee grounds with hot water, then adding ice cubes or rapidly cooling them. The preparation takes about 2-3 minutes. FrontStreet Coffee generally offers two types: one is espresso extracted from an espresso machine and mixed with ice water, and the other is pour-over extracted coffee liquid with ice cubes added.

Advantages: Convenient and Quick

Disadvantages: Flavor easily becomes diluted due to ice melting

How FrontStreet Coffee Makes Iced Americano

FrontStreet Coffee uses their store's exclusive Sunflower Warm Blend for demonstration. The coffee bean information is as follows:

• Coffee Bean Name: Sunflower Warm Blend
• Blend Bean Sources: Honduras Sherry Cask, Yirgacheffe Red Cherry Natural
• Blend Ratio: 7:3
• Flavor Description: Vanilla, Cream, Fermented Wine Aroma, Chocolate

To make iced Americano, you first need to extract espresso. The espresso extraction recipe is as follows:

• Coffee Grounds: 20g
• Coffee Liquid: 40g
• Extraction Time: 27 seconds

After extracting the espresso, pour ice cubes and water into a cup, then pour the espresso into the ice water to serve.

FrontStreet Coffee's exclusive Warm Blend has distinct chocolate and wine aromas. When made into espresso and mixed with ice water, it creates a refreshing and smooth texture with noticeable wine notes, persistent aroma, and chocolate aftertaste.

Cold Brew Coffee

Cold Brew Coffee is similar to cold brew tea - it involves steeping a large amount of coffee grounds directly in water and placing it in a refrigerator for long-term low-temperature extraction, taking about 8-12 hours. It's also known as ice brewed coffee. This cold brew method amplifies various flavors and aromas of coffee while reducing acidity, making the flavor cleaner and purer. The characteristic of cold brew coffee is that it tastes better the colder it gets, and you can add ice cubes directly without worrying about flavor dilution. In the US, it's more popular to add coconut water in equal proportions for a different experience.

Advantages: Cold water won't extract impurities and bitterness from coffee beans

Disadvantages: Longer preparation time

How FrontStreet Coffee Makes Cold Brew Coffee

FrontStreet Coffee has launched several cold brew coffee bags. The principle is similar to individual tea bags - using pre-measured 10g of grounds with a 1:10 water ratio (if you don't want it too strong, you can use a 1:12 ratio), and placing it in the refrigerator for 10 hours (8 hours or more is fine).

This time, FrontStreet Coffee has created 10 different types of coffee cold brew bags:

FrontStreet Coffee recommends using wide-mouthed cups or bottles with lids for extraction:

1. Take out the coffee cold brew bag and hold the drawstring.

2. Place it in a cup/bottle. If not adding water or milk, extract at a 1:10 ratio (one 10g cold brew bag with 100g cold water). If adding water or milk, you can extract at a 1:6 ratio (one 10g cold brew bag with 60g cold water).

3. Cover with the lid, shake gently, and place in the refrigerator for 8-12 hours to allow the coffee grounds to fully contact with the cold water.
4. After cold brewing is complete, remove the cold brew bag and enjoy.

If you have coffee grounds at home, you can also steep them directly in a bottle, and when the extraction time is up, filter out the coffee grounds to drink.

FrontStreet Coffee suggests using a coarser grind setting for cold brew coffee than usual pour-over. Although low water temperature doesn't easily extract substances, the extraction time is quite long and it's immersion-style, so to avoid it being too strong, adjust the grind coarser. If you're too lazy to adjust the grind, you can use pour-over grind parameters and dilute with ice cubes afterward. Taking FrontStreet Coffee's Honduras Sherry coffee beans as an example, pour-over uses a grind setting where 80% passes through a Chinese standard #20 sieve, so cold brew coffee should use an even lower percentage, choosing 50%.

The coffee-to-water ratio is 1:10. Choose a sealed bottle of 300ml or more, add coffee grounds and ice water to the bottle in sequence, and store in the refrigerator for 12 hours. If you have cooking filter bags at home, you can also put the coffee grounds in filter bags for soaking, which makes cleaning easier and eliminates the need for filtering.

After 8-12 hours, filter using our coffee brewing filter paper, and a refreshing Honduras Sherry cold brew coffee is complete~

The flavor has rich wine aroma, rich vanilla cream sensation, with chocolate and cocoa texture.

Ice Drip Coffee

In Japan, ice drip coffee has a history of several hundred years, so it's also called "Kyoto coffee" or "Japanese-style slow-drip." In South Korea, almost every coffee shop sells ice drip coffee, and many famous ice drip equipment brands come from Japan and South Korea.

Coffee made by extracting flavor substances from coffee grounds with evenly dropping cold water, drop by drop, at a speed of 7 drops per 10 seconds for about 6-8 hours (time depends on equipment size). The extracted coffee flavor changes according to factors such as coffee roast level, water amount, water temperature, drip speed, and coffee grind coarseness.

Advantages: Using cold water drip filtration, coffee is 100% saturated and moist, resulting in smooth coffee without acidity

Disadvantages: Need to control drip speed at a slow rate of 7 drops per 10 seconds

How FrontStreet Coffee Extracts Ice Drip Coffee

1. The ratio of coffee:water:ice is 1:5:5, with a coffee-to-water ratio of 1:10.
2. You can tamp the grounds slightly, but not too forcefully - the weight of the tamper itself is sufficient. The purpose of tamping is to level the grounds, not to compact them. Without tamping, water will easily float the grounds when it first hits; but tamping too hard will prevent water from passing through and easily cause channeling.
3. Remember to place a filter paper on the coffee bed. Because the tension of the filter paper helps distribute water evenly, without it, long-term water dripping will create a pit in the coffee bed.

4. Use ice water for "pre-soaking" (ice + water, 1:1). This is actually similar to the blooming process in pour-over, which can improve extraction efficiency and product consistency. Direct ice dripping might cause uneven moistening of the coffee layer, with some coffee grounds over-extracted while others don't participate in extraction.

5. After making it, it's best to pour the coffee into a sealed glass bottle and let it ferment in the refrigerator overnight, allowing the coffee flavors to meld together for better taste and easier drinking.

FrontStreet Coffee Ice Drip Coffee Recipes

FrontStreet Coffee sometimes uses one or more single-origin beans to make ice drip coffee. We've paired several good flavor combinations to recommend for your reference.

1. Clean and Refreshing Type

60g [Kenya Assalia]

Using washed [Kenya] coffee beans for ice drip yields a coffee with clean flavor and bright acidity.

[Kenya Assalia] is a classic Kenyan coffee that tastes like a glass of juice, with obvious cherry tomato acidity at the entrance, some grapefruit peel flavor in the middle, and aftertaste with berry aroma and caramel sweetness.

2. Fermented Wine Aroma Type

① 30g [Sidamo Guji] + 30g [Panama Hartmann]

Natural processed [Guji] plus red wine processed [Hartmann], with rich fermented wine aroma and some fruit acidity.

Natural processed [Guji] has higher sweetness, smelling of strawberry-like berry flavors, with passion fruit, fermented wine aroma, strawberry, and jackfruit flavors when drinking.

Red wine processed [Hartmann] has some fermented red wine aroma, smooth entry, with tropical fruit, nuts, and brown sugar flavors.

The coffee dripped from this recipe has strong fermentation notes, higher sweetness, and higher body.

② 30g [Honduras Sherry] + 30g [Costa Rica Beethoven]

Whiskey barrel processed Sherry plus washed processed Beethoven, with fermented wine aroma, rich fruit acidity with honey sweetness.

Washed processed Beethoven has obvious citrus acidity with full berry juice sensation.

Whiskey barrel fermented Sherry has obvious whiskey aroma with vanilla cream-like smoothness.

Made into ice drip, you'll feel rich whiskey aroma, with obvious citrus acidity and full berry juice sensation plus vanilla cream smoothness.

③ 20g [Honduras Lychee Lan] + 40g [Geisha Village Red Label]

Brandy barrel processed Lychee Lan plus natural processed Geisha Village Red Label, with light brandy aroma, plum-like acidity paired with maple sweetness.

Brandy barrel processed Lychee Lan has rich brandy aroma, chocolate finish and honey aftertaste.

Natural processed Geisha Village Red Label, plum, citrus fruit acidity, with maple sweetness and cream-like smooth texture.

Made into ice drip, you'll feel light brandy aroma, rich fruit acidity leading honey sweetness and cream-like smooth texture.

3. Balanced Complementary Type

30g [Costa Rica Bahia] + 30g [Yirgacheffe Gedeb]

[Bahia] has slight fermentation notes, raisin, caramel, and higher sweetness.

Washed processed [Gedeb] has mature yellow lemon sweet and sour aroma as its main tone, with some black tea feeling in the aftertaste, tasting like a cup of lemon tea.

It smells with a hint of fermentation aroma but tastes with lemon acidity, overall flavor trending toward sweet and sour, with relatively light and balanced taste.

For more specialty coffee beans, please add FrontStreet Coffee on WeChat: kaixinguoguo0925

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473