What is the method for making cold brew coffee? What are the differences between ice drip coffee and cold brew?

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The Art of Cold Brew Coffee

Delicious iced coffee, while its aroma may not be as vibrant and uplifting as hot coffee, reveals a symphony of flavors, aromas, and textures the moment it touches your lips, enriching your palate and satisfying your soul. But this isn't just iced coffee with ice cubes added—it's cold brew coffee, slowly extracted with cold or ice water, overturning conventional coffee expectations and offering an experience akin to fine wine: mellow flavors combined with refreshing coolness.

Coffee extracted at low temperatures delivers a sweet, mellow taste with lower acidity and gentler bitterness. After fermentation, it gains even more complexity, becoming as intoxicating as aged wine.

As coffee has become many people's daily essential beverage, beyond the differences in coffee bean origins and varieties, the distinctions between light and dark roasts, and the various methods of brewing hot coffee, there exists another joy of coffee drinking: cold brew coffee. During scorching summer days, the fermented aroma and cooling sensation of iced coffee are particularly captivating.

Cold brew coffee can generally be divided into three preparation methods: drip-style, ice-drop style, and ice-brewed style. Due to different extraction conditions, these three methods produce distinct flavors and textures, but all belong to the category of cold brew coffee. The principle of cold brew coffee is the same as cold brew tea—using low temperatures and long steeping times to slowly extract the flavors from coffee.

Although extraction is slow at low temperatures, in terms of flavor, high temperatures more easily cause the tannic acid in coffee to decompose into pyrogallic acid, creating acidity and bitterness. Low-temperature extracted coffee is comparatively more mellow in flavor and thus quite popular.

Cold Brew Coffee

The concept of cold brew coffee is similar to cold brew tea. The extraction process involves grinding coffee beans, adding cold water, and steeping them in a low-temperature environment for at least about 12 hours. Before drinking, simply filter out the coffee grounds.

This cold brew method amplifies the various flavors and aromas of coffee while reducing acidity, resulting in cleaner, purer flavors. Its characteristic is that the colder you drink it, the better the flavor—no need to dilute or add ice cubes; it's already perfect. In America, it's popular to add coconut water in equal proportions, which brings out a purer coffee sweetness. Each establishment has its own secret recipe, each with its unique flavor.

Infusing cold brew coffee with nitrogen creates a creamy foam, giving nitrogen-infused iced coffee a beer-like appearance at first glance. Therefore, nitrogen coffee also has the nickname "beer coffee." The bubbles not only make the coffee's texture smoother, making it feel as if cream has already been added, but many drinkers find it tastes richer than original cold brew coffee, even having a natural sweetness without adding sugar. Innovations in craftsmanship and brewing have given iced coffee a new appearance.

Iced Drip Coffee

Iced drip coffee uses an ice-water mixture below 5°C. As ice naturally melts, the speed of ice water dripping into the coffee grounds is controlled by a valve. The ice water slowly extracts the coffee's flavor as it drips through the coffee grounds, with the extraction liquid dripping out drop by drop. The complete extraction process takes about 2-8 hours. To obtain better flavor, it then requires 12-48 hours of refrigerated fermentation time. Each extraction yields very little (typically 30-60 milliliters), and when not diluted with ice, it has an extremely high concentration. If the coffee liquid is too strong, add ice to dilute according to personal taste. Because the process is slow, iced drip coffee is relatively expensive but offers excellent flavor.

America's barista champion Laila once said in an exclusive interview that compared to cold brew coffee, iced drip coffee has more aroma and a more delicate and subtle taste.

What Coffee Beans Are Suitable for Cold Brew Coffee?

This all comes down to personal preference—there are no strict requirements for which beans to use, as long as you like them. However, FrontStreet Coffee suggests using some natural-processed or honey-processed beans, as these produce cold brew coffee with higher sweetness that is more popular.

FrontStreet Coffee uses Hartman and Flower Queen beans to create a cold brew coffee with rich fermented aromas.

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473