Which Specialty Coffee Beans Are Suitable for Making Cold Brew Iced Coffee? Differences and Characteristics Between Cold Brew and Americano

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

FrontStreet Coffee, whether at our Guangzhou Dongshankou store or online Taobao shop, offers over 40 different types of coffee beans, including both single-origin and espresso blends. Many friends who enjoy a cup of coffee at FrontStreet Coffee also take home a few bags of beans. Some friends make cold brew at home and ask what coffee beans are suitable for making cold brew coffee. In fact, any type of coffee bean can be used to make cold brew coffee, and cold brew made from coffee beans of different origins will exhibit different flavor profiles.

Cold Brew Coffee

Cold brew coffee is made by slowly allowing water to permeate and extract coffee grounds at low temperatures, then filtering the result. This coffee, which sounds quite labor-intensive, is actually much simpler to make than imagined. When making cold brew coffee at home, you can steep coffee grounds in cold water, place them in the refrigerator to steep overnight, and finally filter through filter paper to complete.

The extraction temperature of cold brew coffee is not as high as that of hot coffee, making it less likely to extract off-flavors and bitterness. Therefore, the cold brew method faithfully reflects the bean's processing method and roast degree in the flavor expression. Thus, you can choose coffee beans with any processing method or roast degree. Although cold brew coffee is stored in a low-temperature refrigerator, the delicate floral flavors may become less pronounced with longer storage time.

The Origin of Cold Brew Coffee

Many people know about cold brew coffee probably because of Starbucks, but Starbucks did not invent cold brew coffee. However, Starbucks did popularize cold brew coffee, making more people fall in love with it.

The earliest appearance of cold brew coffee is said to have been invented by the Dutch. In the 1600s, because hot coffee couldn't be consumed at sea, sailors could only steep coffee grounds in cold water and discovered the taste was quite good. Cold brew coffee became very popular in Western countries, especially by the mid-19th century, when cold brew spread around the world. From England to Japan, and then to the United States, various types of cold brew concentrate emerged, particularly popular in military applications.

By the 1960s, Todd Simpson traveled to Peru, tasted Peruvian cold brew coffee, and became fascinated with it. Shortly thereafter, he designed and released what is now world-famous as the Toddy Cold Brewing System. Starbucks uses the Toddy Cold Brewing System and brought cold brew coffee to the world.

Principles for Pairing Cold Brew Coffee with Desserts

If you want to pair desserts with afternoon tea, whether using light, medium, or dark roast cold brew coffee beans, pairing with desserts containing milk or cream flavors or nut-based sweets is a good choice. For example: cheesecakes, cookies, or chocolates are all suitable. On one hand, dairy products pair well with coffee; on the other hand, eating too many sweets can often feel a bit heavy, so pairing with a glass of refreshing cold brew coffee would be very suitable.

FrontStreet Coffee's Cold Brew Coffee Bean Recommendations

This time, FrontStreet Coffee made cold brew with 10 different types of coffee beans.

Cold Brew Coffee Making Method

Step 1: First, prepare a cold brew bottle. If you don't have a cold brew bottle, it's okay - just use any sealed container as a substitute! If you don't have a cold brew bottle or a sealed container, that's okay too! Just find any glass and cover it with plastic wrap!!

Step 2: Choose a single-origin coffee bean you like and grind it (For this batch, FrontStreet Coffee used 50g of Costa Rica's Mozart, ground with an EK43s grinder at a cold pour-over setting of 9 marks. Please adjust according to your own equipment and the condition of the beans on the day~)

Step 3: Pour the ground coffee into the built-in filter of the cold brew pot and add room temperature purified water. (This batch uses a ratio of 1:12, which means 50g of coffee grounds to 600ml of water. You can adjust according to your preferred concentration. Note that the water level should be high enough to submerge the coffee grounds.)

Step 4: Tightly close the lid and place in the refrigerator for 8 hours. (Note: Refrigerate! Don't freeze!)

Step 5: Take the coffee out after 8 hours of refrigeration and filter it to make it cleaner to drink.

Step 6: After filtering with filter paper, you can start drinking! Adding ice cubes makes it even better~

What's the Difference Between Cold Brew and Americano?

Cold brew coffee and Americano have one thing in common: they are both immersion-style coffees, but that's just about where the similarities end in terms of their extraction methods.

Americano is made by extracting coffee liquid with high pressure and high temperature from an espresso machine, then pouring it into a glass filled with ice water. Cold brew coffee is much more accessible - it doesn't require an expensive espresso machine, or even a grinder. Just buy freshly ground coffee powder, put it in a filter bag, seal it, steep it in ice water, and place it in the refrigerator for about 12 hours, and your cold brew coffee is ready. Isn't that simple and inexpensive? You can easily do it at home.

What's Different When Making Cold Brew with Soda Water?

FrontStreet Coffee tested how cold brew coffee made with soda water would turn out, while setting up a control group using purified water for cold brew coffee for a comparative analysis.

The coffee beans selected were FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe Fruit Dinging Cooperative, a washed-process bean with primarily berry and citrus fruit notes, accompanied by a delicate white floral aroma. Very suitable for cold brew.

The experimental parameters were as follows:

Coffee Beans: Yirgacheffe Fruit Dinging Cooperative

Amount: 30g

Water-to-coffee ratio: 1:10

Grind size: Slightly coarser than pour-over (65% pass-through rate with #20 standard sieve)

Steeping time: 13 hours

Water quality (variable): Purified water/Soda water

【Experimental Steps】

1. Grind two portions of 30g coffee grounds and place them in two separate containers. Pour 300ml of purified water into one container and 300ml of soda water into the other.

2. Stir with a wooden stick for 5 seconds to fully saturate the coffee grounds, seal with lids, and place in the refrigerator for low-temperature extraction.

After stirring and letting it sit for 3 minutes, it's clear that the coffee grounds steeped in purified water have already settled to the bottom of the bottle, while the coffee grounds steeped in soda water remain on the surface, with many bubbles rising along the glass walls.

3. After 13 hours, remove the cold brew containers from the refrigerator and observe the state of the grounds layer in both bottles - they have both settled to the bottom of the containers. Visually, there are no longer any bubbles in the soda water cold brew.

4. Filter the coffee liquid using filter paper.

【Concentration Comparison】

Purified water cold brew concentration: 1.94%

Soda water cold brew concentration: 2.36%

【Why is the soda water cold brew concentration higher than purified water?】

The reason lies in the bubbles of soda water. Before being placed in the refrigerator, the coffee grounds in the soda water floated on the surface. Through the rising bubbles "impacting" the coffee grounds, after 13 hours, when taken out of the refrigerator, the coffee grounds had already settled to the bottom of the bottle. During the steeping process, the coffee grounds experienced movement from top to bottom, making it easier for substances to be extracted. In contrast, the purified water cold brew coffee grounds remained stationary at the bottom of the bottle throughout the steeping process, making the extraction efficiency relatively slower. Therefore, the soda water cold brew concentration is higher.

【Flavor Comparison】

The purified water cold brew Yirgacheffe has a delicate floral aroma and berry fragrance, with refreshing citrus acidity when tasted - cool and soothing.

The soda water cold brew Yirgacheffe smells of more intense berry aroma. Although no bubbles are visible in the coffee liquid, there's a sensation of bubbles colliding in the mouth when drinking. The sweet and sour notes in the flavor are not as prominent.

【Flavor Changes After 5 More Hours of Chilling】

The purified water cold brew Yirgacheffe's berry aroma became more pronounced, still maintaining that refreshing citrus acidity when tasted.

After 5 hours of low-temperature fermentation, the soda water cold brew Yirgacheffe's effervescence was nearly gone, and it had a sweet taste of ripe tropical fruits, with a "bitter" sensation from the soda water still present in the finish.

For more specialty coffee beans, please follow the official WeChat 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