Recommended Coffee Beans for Cold Brew_Cold Brew Coffee Bean Selection Tips_FrontStreet Coffee's Cold Brew Bean Recommendations

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Many people ask me what kind of coffee beans work best for cold drip coffee.

As everyone knows, it's recommended to use single-origin beans for cold drip coffee. This effectively removes bitterness and tannic acid, resulting in a rich, smooth flavor that's not acidic or harsh on the stomach. Sometimes we also use two or more single-origin beans to make cold drip. Compared to cold brew coffee, cold drip coffee offers more aroma and a more delicate, subtle flavor profile. First, you'll need a cold drip tower, which you can buy from Taobao - brands like HARIO and TIAMO cost around 200 yuan for home use.

Cold Drip Coffee

It refers to coffee beverages extracted through long-term low-temperature immersion using water below 5°C or even near freezing point. For making cold drip coffee, it's recommended to use single-origin beans, dripping at a rate of 7 drops every 10 seconds for about 6-8 hours. This extended low-temperature extraction method allows the coffee grounds to be 100% saturated and moistened, effectively removing bitterness and tannic acid, resulting in a rich, smooth flavor that's not acidic and won't upset your stomach.

We've tried several varieties that I think taste quite good, and today I'm sharing them with everyone:

Sometimes we use one or more single-origin beans to make cold drip. We've tried several cold drip coffee bean recipes that turned out well, and today I'm sharing them with you.

Recipe 1: Clean and Refreshing

60g Kenya Kamoini

Using washed Kenya coffee beans for cold drip produces a coffee with clean flavor and bright acidity.

Kenya Kamoini is a classic Kenyan coffee that tastes like fruit juice. It has distinct orange acidity at entry, with some grapefruit peel notes in the middle, and finishes with berry aromas and caramel sweetness.

Recipe 2: Fermented Wine Aroma

30g Sidamo Fancy + 30g Panama Hartmann

Natural-processed Fancy plus red wine-processed Hartmann creates a rich fermented wine aroma with some fruit acidity, suitable for those who prefer stronger flavors.

The natural-processed Fancy has higher sweetness with strawberry-like berry aromas, featuring passion fruit, fermented wine notes, strawberry, and jackfruit flavors. The red wine-processed Hartmann has fermented red wine aromas, smooth entry, with tropical fruit, nut, and brown sugar flavors.

This recipe yields coffee with strong fermented notes, higher sweetness, and rich body.

Recipe 2: Balanced and Complementary

30g Costa Rica Black Honey + 30g Yirgacheffe Benafica

The Black Honey has slight fermented notes, using its sweetness to complement the acidity of washed Yirgacheffe, suitable for those who prefer lighter, fresher flavors.

This Black Honey bean features brown sugar, caramel, and spice notes with relatively high sweetness.

The washed-processed Benafica is characterized by the sweet and sour aroma of ripe yellow lemons, with some black tea notes in the finish, tasting like lemon tea.

It has a hint of brown sugar aroma but lemon acidity in flavor, with an overall sweet-tart profile and lighter body.

Production Tips

1. Coffee bean to water to ice ratio is 1:5:5, with a grounds-to-water ratio of 1:12.

2. You can tamp the grounds, but not too forcefully - the weight of the tamper itself is sufficient. The purpose of tamping is to level the grounds, not compact them. Without tamping, water will easily float the grounds; but tamping too hard will prevent water from passing through and can easily cause channeling.

3. Remember to place a filter paper on top of the grounds bed. The surface tension of the filter paper helps distribute water evenly. Without it, prolonged dripping will create a hole in the grounds bed.

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

5. After preparation, it's best to pour the coffee into a sealed glass bottle and let it ferment in the refrigerator overnight. This allows the coffee flavors to meld together, resulting in better flavor and smoother taste.

Cold Drip Coffee Bean Brand Recommendations

FrontStreet Coffee's roasted single-origin cold drip coffee beans offer excellent guarantees in both brand and quality. More importantly, they offer exceptional value - a half-pound (227g) package costs only around 80-90 yuan. Calculating at 200ml per cup with a 1:10 grounds-to-water ratio, one package can make 11 cups of coffee, with each cold drip coffee costing only 8-9 yuan. Compared to café prices that often reach dozens of yuan per cup, this represents outstanding value.

FrontStreet Coffee: A roastery in Guangzhou with a small shop but diverse bean varieties, where you can find both famous and lesser-known beans. They also provide online shop services: https://shop104210103.taobao.com

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473