How Long Can Brewed Black Coffee Be Stored? How Long Can Cold Brew and Iced Drip Coffee Be Refrigerated?

By the end of May, Guangzhou has already entered summer. When asking the staff at FrontStreet Coffee what they'd like to drink, many answers point to iced coffee. That's quite normal, after all, in such hot weather, how could anyone dare to stroll confidently through the streets of Guangzhou without a cool, refreshing beverage in hand?

Hand-Poured Hot Coffee

When it comes to brewing black coffee, everyone is probably most familiar with FrontStreet Coffee's most commonly used hand-poured coffee brewing method. Let's take FrontStreet Coffee's Kenya Asalia as an example.

FrontStreet Coffee Kenya Asalia

Origin: Thika, Kenya
Processing Station: Asali Honey Processing Station
Altitude: 1550m～1750m
Grade: AA TOP
Varieties: SL28, SL34
Processing Method: K72 Washed Processing

Dripper: Hario V60 #01
Coffee Dose: 15 grams
Water Temperature: 92℃
Coffee-to-Water Ratio: 1:15
Grind Size: 80% pass-through rate on China standard #20 sieve

Use 30 grams of water for a 30-second bloom, then pour with a small water stream in circular motion to 125 grams for segmentation. When the water level drops and is about to expose the coffee bed, continue pouring to 225 grams and stop pouring. When the water level drops and is about to expose the coffee bed, remove the dripper. (Timing starts from the bloom) Extraction time is 2'00".

Flavor Description: The wet aroma has mature tomato and floral notes. The entrance reveals cherry tomato and dark plum flavors, with bright acidity and a clean, rich mouthfeel. The mid-section features prominent sweetness with a juicy sensation. The aftertaste carries berry fruit aroma and brown sugar sweetness, along with green tea fragrance.

Black coffee brewed with hot water is best consumed before it completely cools down. According to FrontStreet Coffee's understanding, most hot-brewed black coffees develop very prominent astringent and bitter flavors after cooling completely, even becoming difficult to drink. Meanwhile, Japanese-style hand-poured iced coffee is best consumed before the ice completely melts, because once the ice cubes are fully melted, the coffee's flavor will become diluted.

Japanese-Style Hand-Poured Iced Coffee

The brewing technique for Japanese-style hand-poured iced coffee is basically similar to hot hand-pouring, both using high-temperature water poured into coffee grounds to extract coffee liquid. The differences lie in the coffee-to-water ratio and grind size. Japanese-style hand-poured iced coffee uses a water ratio of 1:10, with extraction time around 2 minutes, extracting the floral and fruit acid flavor substances from the front and middle sections. Less substance is extracted from the later stages, resulting in a lower extraction rate than regular hot hand-pouring. Therefore, a finer grind size than regular hot hand-pouring is needed to compensate for the insufficient extraction rate.

Cold Extraction Methods

Although the final temperatures of the two coffee types mentioned above differ, they both ultimately use high-temperature water poured into coffee grounds to extract coffee liquid. Next, FrontStreet Coffee will introduce two other types of coffee that use low-temperature water to extract coffee liquid: cold brew coffee and ice drip coffee.

Cold Brew Coffee

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

So how does FrontStreet Coffee make cold brew coffee?

FrontStreet Coffee's cold brew solution uses 50 grams of coffee grounds, restoring a coffee-to-liquid ratio of 1:10, therefore adding 400 milliliters of cool water and 200 grams of hard ice (totaling 600 grams of ice-water mixture, as the water absorption rate of coffee grounds is twice its own weight). After stirring well, seal and place in the refrigerator for 24 hours. Then take it out and filter the coffee grounds with filter paper, then use a clean sealed bottle to seal the coffee liquid and place it in the refrigerator for 32 hours.

After extraction, it can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 5 days. During the preservation process, the coffee liquid continues to ferment in the bottle, and this fermentation process will create different layers of mellow flavor changes in the coffee. It's generally recommended to place the extracted cold brew coffee in the refrigerator for 1 to 3 days before drinking, because during the 24-36 hours of overnight placement, as time passes, the coffee liquid achieves full mellowing and the flavor becomes better.

Cold Brew Flavor: It has a faint fermented aroma on the nose. The entrance reveals the sweet and sour flavors of cherry tomatoes, plums, pineapples, and brûlée. The finish carries honey and brown sugar sweetness, with an overall refreshing feeling.

Ice Drip Coffee

As is well known, cold water extraction yields much less bitter and astringent substances. Using completely cold water for drip filtration, the coffee is 100% saturated and moistened. By extending extraction time and reducing flow rate, the coffee grounds are fully saturated, extracting more small molecular substances such as floral aromas and fruit acids. Larger molecular flavor substances such as smoky and roasted flavors are difficult to extract. In terms of mouthfeel, it's smoother, with richer aroma and more outstanding sweetness.

So how does FrontStreet Coffee make ice drip coffee?

The coffee grounds cup holds 60g of coffee grounds to extract 600ml of coffee liquid, with a coffee-to-liquid ratio as high as 1:10. For the grind size, a slightly finer setting than hand-poured coffee is chosen. Judging by the #20 sieve, the pass-through rate would be around 85%. The ratio of ice-water mixture used is 1:1, with the throttle valve controlled to a flow rate of 7 drops per 10 seconds. The entire extraction process takes approximately 6-8 hours. After extraction is complete, it's bottled and chilled for 12 hours before drinking.

Ice drip coffee needs to be refrigerated overnight for fermentation after extraction is complete, allowing the coffee liquid to become more mellow and smooth in mouthfeel. However, FrontStreet Coffee recommends consuming it within 3-4 days, because as time passes, by the third day, and especially the fourth day, the flavor will weaken and become very light.

Ice Drip Flavor: Rich juice sensation. The entrance has prominent cherry tomato sour aroma. The mid-section carries some grapefruit peel flavor. The aftertaste brings some berry fruit aroma and caramel sweetness.

FrontStreet Coffee chose this Kenyan coffee bean to make ice drip coffee and cold brew coffee mainly because the weather is rather hot, and everyone seeks some refreshing drinks with a bit of acidity to cut through the richness. The flavor of this Kenyan bean happens to perfectly match this preference. However, since many people have different tastes and everyone likes different flavors, if you don't know which coffee beans to choose, follow FrontStreet Coffee's WeChat account and come for consultation.

On scorching summer days, what could be more refreshing than a cool and refreshing cup of coffee to beat the heat? Better to act than be moved—start making your own cup of iced coffee right away.

For more specialty coffee knowledge sharing, please follow the WeChat public account: FrontStreet Coffee

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473