Can You Make Iced Coffee with a French Press? What Coffee Beans Are Best for Iced Coffee? French Press Grind Size

Iced coffee does not require a pour-over setup. If a French press is the only brewer in your kitchen, you can still make a clean, concentrated iced cup, and the process is simpler than most people expect.

Some readers have asked: "I don't have pour-over equipment at home, only a French press. Can I still make iced coffee?" Since the question keeps coming up, this installment shares the French press iced coffee recipe FrontStreet Coffee settled on after repeated testing.

Concept

The French press works on the principle of immersion extraction. With the same beans, a French press tends to produce a more balanced, fuller-bodied cup than pour-over brewing. So we borrowed the idea behind Japanese iced pour-over and applied it to the press: steep the coffee in a small amount of hot water to extract a concentrated liquid, then pour that over ice to dilute and chill it, creating iced coffee.

Because ice will be added to dilute the coffee, a light-roast bean with high acidity is not the best choice here. Dilution thins out the taste, and steeping an acidic light roast can easily bring out unpleasant notes reminiscent of almonds and peanut skin.

In the end, we chose FrontStreet Coffee's Strawberry Sugar beans. They are rich in floral and fruity notes, with moderate caramel and candied-fruit flavors, and an exceptionally fresh aroma that makes them well suited to immersion extraction.

Extraction Method

1. Preparation: gather a French press, a digital scale, a glass, hot water and ice cubes. Use 15g of coffee grounds. To get a more concentrated hot coffee liquid, the ratio of grounds to hot water is 1:8, with water at 94°C. For grind size, because the French press uses a metal filter, we do not recommend grinding finer to raise the extraction rate. Use a medium-coarse grind (70% pass-through rate on a #20 standard sieve).

2. Grind the coffee and pour it into the French press, then pour in 120g of hot water (and start the timer), pouring directly into the center.

3. After 30 seconds, stir the coffee grounds with a stir stick to raise the extraction rate, forming three layers: coffee liquid, coffee grounds and coffee foam.

4. Put the lid on the French press and wait until 3 minutes. During this time you can add 105g of ice cubes to the glass.

5. After 3 minutes, slowly press down the plunger. Let it rest for 1 minute so the grounds settle.

6. At the fourth minute, pick up the French press and pour the coffee into the glass with the ice cubes.

That completes a cup of French press iced coffee. Because it is filtered through a metal screen, the surface still keeps a good layer of coffee oils. The vanilla-like aroma of the Strawberry Sugar beans comes through clearly, refreshing without losing richness.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

If the iced recipe above has you reaching for your French press more often, a couple of FrontStreet Coffee beans suit it especially well. The FrontStreet Strawberry Candy, a Geisha blend built from Costa Rica honey-processed coffee and Panama washed Geisha, gives the press a rose, citrus, grape and dried blueberry aroma, and when milk is added it turns into a strawberry gummy note. For a heavier, more classic cup, the FrontStreet PWN Golden Mandheling is sorted three times by hand and once by machine, leaving large, even, translucent beans; after a medium-dark roast it brings spice, caramel, cedar and dark chocolate, and the French press draws out a mellow body with plenty of oils.

French press technique follows the same rules whether you serve the coffee hot or over ice. Keep the grind coarse, closer to coarse sugar or small gravel, around 10.5 on an EK43s or 26 clicks on a hand grinder, because a metal filter lets fine particles through and a grind that is too fine leaves sludge in the cup. A common ratio is 1:15, or 15g of coffee to 225g of water, which usually lands between 1.1% and 1.2% concentration. If you have no thermometer, boil the water and let it stand for 2-3 minutes, roughly 90°C, and go 1-2°C hotter than you would for pour-over, since a full immersion brew has no pouring agitation to help extraction. Steep for 3 to 5 minutes, starting at 4 minutes, then adjust from there.