How much ice and coffee-to-water ratio for iced pour-over? What coffee beans are suitable for iced coffee?

Recently, many friends have come to FrontStreet Coffee to enjoy ice pour-over coffee. While brewing coffee at FrontStreet Coffee, they have coincidentally raised some questions. FrontStreet Coffee has summarized them into two main issues: first, what is the coffee-to-water ratio and how much ice should be added? Second, what's the difference between adding ice before versus after brewing?

How much ice to add?

The role of ice in making ice pour-over coffee is to cool the hot coffee, so you need at least enough ice cubes to lower the coffee liquid to 5-10 degrees Celsius. However, we know that if all the ice melts, the coffee will return to room temperature, making it less enjoyable to drink. Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee suggests keeping a small amount of ice remaining after the coffee has cooled to maintain the low temperature.

At FrontStreet Coffee, the ratio of coffee grounds to water to ice in our ice coffee is 1:10:6.7. For example, with 15 grams of coffee grounds, the total water amount is 150 milliliters, and 100 grams of hard ice cubes are added. After brewing, stir or shake continuously to lower the coffee temperature. When the temperature reaches around 5-10 degrees, it's ready, with a small amount of ice remaining in the coffee.

Since the coffee temperature has already dropped, the remaining ice will melt more slowly, so there's no need to worry about the coffee becoming too diluted and flavorless.

Note: Since ice coffee reduces the amount of water, to maintain extraction of flavor compounds, other parameters need adjustment. The simplest method is to use a finer grind size.

Ice before or after brewing?

The second question is about the order of adding ice. Adding ice first means placing ice cubes directly in the serving pitcher before brewing. The characteristic of this method is that as you brew, the coffee liquid begins to cool immediately as it drips into the pitcher. Adding ice after brewing means adding ice cubes after the coffee is brewed or pouring it into a glass with ice. The characteristic here is that the coffee liquid blends thoroughly before cooling together.

FrontStreet Coffee has conducted comparisons on this method, brewing two batches of coffee at nearly the same time - one with ice added first and the other with ice added after. After thorough stirring and even cooling, we tasted both to determine if there were flavor differences.

The conclusion was that the flavor difference between these two cups of coffee is minimal and the difference can be considered negligible. If we must find differences, the coffee with ice added first appears cleaner and more refreshing, while the coffee with ice added after has more concentrated aroma and shows more variation during tasting.

Of course, besides the direct method of adding ice cubes for dilution and cooling, there are two more luxurious rapid cooling methods. The first is the ice straining method, where brewed concentrated coffee is passed through 2-3 rounds of ice cubes to achieve cooling. This way, the negative effect of ice melting into water diluting the coffee is much smaller than directly adding ice.

The second method is ice-separation cooling. Place the brewed hot coffee in a shaker, then rotate it rapidly in ice to cool it down. The advantage is that it doesn't dilute the coffee concentration and doesn't affect the coffee's flavor and mouthfeel.

Important Notice :

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FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473