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?

During the scorching summer, for coffee enthusiasts, the ritual of summer often begins with a refreshing iced coffee. That's why FrontStreet Coffee has been sharing various iced coffee brewing methods recently, and today's sharing is no exception.

Today, FrontStreet Coffee wants to share how to use drip coffee bags to make two different types of iced coffee. This is because not all friends want to go through the trouble of preparing professional coffee equipment for brewing. So, we'll use the most convenient and simple drip coffee bags to create two types of iced coffee that would normally require professional equipment! One is pour-over iced coffee, and the other is cold brew coffee~

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

As everyone knows, iced pour-over is a brewing method derived from the framework of hot pour-over. The conventional approach is to add ice cubes on top of hot pour-over to quickly get a cup of iced pour-over coffee. However, because the melting of ice cubes will dilute the coffee's concentration, we need to adjust relevant parameters to offset the impact of ice melting on coffee concentration.

Traditional drip bag coffee and pour-over coffee brewing methods are very similar, so we can also apply the iced pour-over model to making iced drip bag coffee.

Reducing water amount and adjusting to a finer grind are the parameter adjustments FrontStreet Coffee makes when brewing iced pour-over. Reducing water amount is to increase coffee concentration to offset the impact of ice melting on concentration; while adjusting to a finer grind is to correct the decreased extraction efficiency caused by reduced water amount, allowing the coffee to have high concentration while maintaining sufficient extraction rate.

We can reduce the water amount for brewing drip bags, but since drip bag coffee uses pre-ground coffee powder, we cannot adjust the grind size of the coffee powder. Therefore, the object we need to adjust during brewing needs to be changed to: water temperature.

Increasing water temperature can increase the dissolution speed of hot water. The higher the water temperature, the faster the flavor compounds in coffee will dissolve. Next, FrontStreet Coffee will demonstrate how to use Strawberry Sugar drip bags to make pour-over iced coffee.

FrontStreet Coffee's drip bag contains 10g of coffee powder per bag, with extraction parameters as follows: water temperature 93°C (90°C for dark roast beans), coffee-ice-water ratio 1:10:6, which means 10g of coffee powder uses 100ml of hot water and 60g of ice. However, because ice won't melt completely right away, as long as you don't take too long to drink your coffee, having a bit more ice is actually fine~ The brewing method is as follows:

Step 1: We prepare a tall glass (a shorter glass with larger capacity also works), first put ice cubes into the glass.

Step 2: Hang the drip bag on the glass.

Step 3: Start brewing when the water temperature reaches the right level. 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, 20ml each, and pour them in small streams in a circular motion. Remember to wait for the previous pour to finish before pouring the next portion.

Step 5: As the last pour of hot water completely permeates, we can remove the drip bag and finish extraction.

Step 6: Use any tool to stir the coffee to ensure even concentration and temperature. After stirring, you can start drinking~

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

Cold brew coffee is relatively much simpler because its production neither has too many parameters to pay attention to, nor do we need to deliberately control water flow. The operation is very simple. However, we need to prepare an additional sealed bottle for it, and the amount of coffee powder used will also be greater.

In terms of parameters, we can adjust them based on whether we plan to add ice when drinking. If you plan to add ice to maintain its low temperature when drinking cold brew, then we can use a 1:10 coffee-to-water ratio for production. The principle is the same as iced brewing, so we won't elaborate further here; if we don't plan to add ice when drinking cold brew, we can use a 1:12 coffee-to-water ratio.

Then, because FrontStreet Coffee's single drip bag contains 10g of coffee powder, if we use a 1:10 ratio for production, the final cold brew coffee liquid will be around 80ml. For most people, this is not a satisfying amount.

Therefore, it's best for us to use 3-5 drip bags at once to make cold brew coffee. Otherwise, waiting such a long time only to get half a cup is somewhat not worth it. Anyway, everyone can decide based on their own needs. Here, FrontStreet Coffee will use four Strawberry Sugar drip bags for demonstration.

Step 1: First, we take out the drip bag, tear open the seal, then 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, according to the 1:10 ratio, we need to pour in 400ml here.

Step 3: Use any tool to stir the coffee powder and water until all coffee powder is soaked in water.

Step 4: Tighten the bottle cap for sealing, then put the entire bottle in the refrigerator for 8-12 hours. (The longer, the stronger)

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

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

Once the coffee liquid is filtered, we can add ice cubes and enjoy the delicious cold brew coffee! It should be noted that the filtered cold brew that you don't plan to drink immediately needs to be poured into a sealed bottle and put back in the refrigerator to prevent deterioration. The shelf life is about five days. As long as you finish the coffee within five days, the chance of deterioration is very small.

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473