Cold Brew Coffee Pricing: How Much Does Iced Drip Coffee Cost and Which Tastes Better - Iced Pour-Over vs Cold Brew

The Rise of Cold Brew Coffee

This summer's runaway trend is undoubtedly cold brew coffee. Specialty coffee shops and big chains alike - Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts among them - have all rolled out cold brew.

Riding that wave, someone invented a variation built on cold brew: lemon juice cold brew. The original inventor is hard to trace, but the Swedish coffee chain da Matteo is probably one of the earliest to sell something similar; its regular menu includes a Kaffelemonad, which is simply lemon juice added to cooled coffee.

Today people make lemon coffee on a cold brew base: brew cold brew using the cold-extraction method, then mix it with lemon juice and lemon slices. After that, almond milk or cucumber bitters can be added.

Does it sound strange? As award-winning barista Sam Lewontin sees it, it's essentially swapping the tea in lemon tea for coffee - not nearly as incompatible as it sounds. The Maillard sugars in coffee are said to release fruity notes that complement the citrus in lemon.

Smaller companies are more nimble at launching new products and jumping on trends. In New York, many specialty coffee shops and small cafes - Stand Coffee, Everyman Espresso and Supercrown Coffee Roasters among them - have introduced this style too. Some have even started small lemon-juice coffee businesses, pushing vintage carts dedicated to the drink.

Many people reach for refreshing drinks in summer, and lemon flavors are especially popular. Yet behind lemon juice coffee lies the broader popularity of cold brew itself.

Cold Brew Market Growth

Cold brew may not yet rival espresso-based coffee in popularity, but it is growing fast: according to Mintel, its growth reached 338.9% between 2010 and 2015. A survey by the American Coffee Association found that 15% of consumers have tried cold brew coffee, already ahead of two other coffee types - nitro coffee and Flat White, at 10% and 8% respectively. Including retail ready-to-drink cold brew, the category's market value in the United States is roughly $2 billion.

Beyond Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts, Peet's Coffee has launched ready-to-drink cold brew beverages, and similar ready-to-drink products are increasingly common on supermarket shelves like Whole Foods. A team under General Electric called FirstBuild has even designed a device that makes cold brew coffee in just 10 minutes, which crowdfunded on Indiegogo.

Cold Brew Coffee Bean Recommendations

FrontStreet Coffee's roasted single-origin cold brew coffee beans offer excellent guarantees on both brand and quality. More importantly, they deliver exceptional value: a half-pound (227-gram) bag costs only around 80-90 yuan. At 200ml per cup with a 1:10 coffee-to-water ratio, one bag makes about 11 cups, working out to only 8-9 yuan per cup - extremely cost-effective next to cafe prices that often reach tens of yuan a cup.

Cold Brew vs. Cold Drip: Which Tastes Better?

FrontStreet Coffee is a Guangzhou roastery with a small shop but diverse bean varieties, where you can find both famous and lesser-known beans.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

For cold brew, reach first for FrontStreet's Strawberry Candy Geisha Blend. It pairs washed Panama Geisha with a Costa Rican honey-processed coffee: one brings delicate rose and orange, the other a sweet grape, dried-blueberry and strawberry-gummy character. Cold-brewed, it's bright and lively with layered sweetness, and if you let it ferment and settle a little, it even takes on a fruity wine-like quality.

If you want the floral side pushed forward, FrontStreet's naturally processed Ethiopia Huakui is a natural pick. Because cold brew amplifies floral and fruit notes while muting woody and roast tones, a light-to-medium roasted bean like this shows off its magnolia, cream strawberry, mango, guava and black tea notes beautifully.

And for a genuinely juicy cup, FrontStreet's Kenya Cherry Tomato - grown in Kenya's Thika region at 1,550-1,750 meters from classic SL28 and SL34, fermented with a 72-hour double washed process - brings cherry tomato, pear, black plum and dark plum acidity that shines especially clearly at low temperature.