How to Brew Cold Brew Coffee? How to Make Cold Brew Iced Coffee with Drip Coffee Bags? Is Cold Brew the Same as Iced Pour-Over?

In the heat of summer, for coffee lovers the season often begins with a refreshing iced coffee. That is why FrontStreet Coffee has been sharing various iced coffee methods lately, and today's is no exception.

Today FrontStreet Coffee wants to show you how to make two different iced coffees with drip coffee bags. Not everyone wants to deal with professional coffee equipment, so we will use the most convenient, simple drip bags to create two kinds of iced coffee that would normally call for proper gear: pour-over iced coffee and cold brew coffee.

How to Use Drip Coffee Bags to Make Pour-Over Iced Coffee?

As everyone knows, iced pour-over grows out of the framework of hot pour-over. The conventional approach is to add ice cubes to a hot pour-over to get a cup of iced coffee quickly. Because the ice will dilute the coffee, though, we need to adjust the relevant parameters to offset that dilution.

Traditional drip bag coffee is brewed much like pour-over, so we can apply the iced pour-over model to making iced drip bag coffee as well.

Reducing the water amount and grinding finer are the parameter adjustments FrontStreet Coffee makes for iced pour-over. Reducing the water raises the coffee concentration to offset dilution from the melting ice, while grinding finer corrects the drop in extraction efficiency caused by using less water, so the coffee stays concentrated while still extracting enough.

We can reduce the water for brewing drip bags, but since drip bag coffee uses pre-ground powder, we cannot change the grind size. The variable left to adjust is therefore water temperature.

Increasing water temperature speeds up dissolution. The hotter the water, the faster the flavor compounds in the coffee dissolve. FrontStreet Coffee will now demonstrate how to make pour-over iced coffee with Strawberry Sugar drip bags.

A FrontStreet Coffee drip bag holds 10g of coffee powder per bag, and the extraction parameters are: water temperature 93°C (90°C for dark roasted beans), coffee-ice-water ratio 1:10:6, which means 10g of coffee powder uses 100ml of hot water and 60g of ice. Because the ice will not melt all at once, a little extra ice is fine as long as you do not take too long to drink your coffee. The method is as follows:

Step 1: Prepare a tall glass (a shorter glass with a larger capacity also works) and put ice cubes in first.

Step 2: Hang the drip bag on the glass.

Step 3: Start brewing once the water reaches the right temperature. First, bloom with 20ml of hot water for 25-30 seconds.

Step 4: When time is up, divide the remaining 80ml of hot water into four portions of 20ml each and pour them in small streams in a circular motion. Remember to wait for the previous pour to finish before starting the next.

Step 5: As the last pour of hot water fully permeates, remove the drip bag to finish extraction.

Step 6: Stir the coffee with any tool to even out concentration and temperature, then start drinking.

How to Use Drip Coffee Bags to Make Cold Brew Coffee?

Cold brew coffee is much simpler, because production involves neither many parameters to watch nor deliberate control of water flow. The operation is very easy. We do need an extra sealed bottle, though, and the amount of coffee powder used will be larger.

For parameters, we can adjust based on whether we plan to add ice when drinking. If you plan to add ice to keep the cold brew cold, use a 1:10 coffee-to-water ratio. The principle is the same as for iced brewing, so we will not go into it again here. If you do not plan to add ice, use a 1:12 coffee-to-water ratio.

Then, since a single FrontStreet Coffee drip bag holds 10g of coffee powder, using a 1:10 ratio yields only about 80ml of cold brew liquid in the end. For most people that is not a satisfying amount.

So it is best to use 3-5 drip bags at once to make cold brew coffee. Otherwise, waiting such a long time for half a cup is hardly worth it. You can decide based on your own needs. Here, FrontStreet Coffee will use four Strawberry Sugar drip bags for the demonstration.

Step 1: Take out the drip bag, tear open the seal, and pour the coffee powder into a sealed bottle. Remember to keep the drip bag.

Step 2: Pour in an appropriate amount of room-temperature water. Because FrontStreet Coffee uses 4 drip bags with 40g of coffee powder, at a 1:10 ratio we need to pour in 400ml here.

Step 3: Stir the coffee powder and water with any tool until all the powder is soaked.

Step 4: Tighten the bottle cap to seal it, then put the whole bottle in the refrigerator for 8-12 hours. The longer it sits, the stronger it gets.

Step 5: When time is up, take out the coffee, then support the drip bag we kept over a glass.

Step 6: Pour the coffee into the drip bag to filter out the grounds. The cold brew coffee is now ready.

Once the coffee liquid is filtered, add ice cubes and enjoy the delicious cold brew coffee. Note that filtered cold brew you do not plan to drink right away should be poured into a sealed bottle and put back in the refrigerator to prevent spoilage. Its shelf life is about five days. As long as you finish the coffee within five days, the chance of spoilage is very small.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Cold brew coffee tends to amplify floral and fruit notes while muting woody and roasted flavors, so a light-to-medium roast is often the best way to show a bean's character. If you like a floral-forward iced coffee, FrontStreet Huakui is a strong choice. It comes from Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee, and the natural process lets the beans absorb plenty of sweet, aromatic compounds from the fruit and skin. Brewed as cold brew, FrontStreet Huakui shows magnolia, cream strawberry, dried mango, guava, and black tea notes.

For a juicy cold brew, FrontStreet Kenya Small Tomato is the first pick. Its sweet-tart notes of cherry tomato, snow pear, black plum, and smoked plum come through beautifully in a low-temperature extraction, with low bitterness and full acidity, and it is especially refreshing over ice, with a long-lasting aroma. FrontStreet Small Tomato comes from Thika in Kenya and uses the carefully bred SL28 and SL34 varieties, which carry complex berry aromas. The distinctive local K72 double-washed process lets the green beans show their own flavor to the fullest, and a light-to-medium roast converts the aroma precursors into more complex notes, giving the coffee a rich fruit character.

For a floral-and-fruit Geisha experience, FrontStreet Strawberry Sugar is a Geisha blend that pairs Panamanian Geisha with a Costa Rican honey-processed coffee. One brings delicate rose and orange notes, the other the sweet, candied aromas of grape, raisin, and strawberry gummy, and together they build a layered cup. As cold brew it is sweet-tart and lively, and if left to ferment and settle a little it even takes on a fruit-wine quality.

Cold brew uses more coffee powder than pour-over, so rather than reaching for expensive high-grade beans, it makes sense to start with affordable, everyday beans, or to blend to get both flavor and value. Many people love the complex sweet aroma of FrontStreet Colombia Sidra, with its passion fruit, grape, apricot, and preserved fruit notes, but find it costly; blending it 1:2 with FrontStreet Costa Rica Tarrazu keeps the Sidra fruit and floral notes alongside Tarrazu's clean citrus acidity while raising the overall value. For an everyday washed single origin, FrontStreet Yirgacheffe is hard to beat: its clean, bright sweet-tart character, affordable positioning, and flexibility across pour-over, siphon, French press, and cold brew make it a first pick for many home brewers. FrontStreet's Yirgacheffe cooperative coffee is a particularly representative washed Yirgacheffe and makes an excellent cold brew, showing sweet berry, clean layers, and honey.