Iced Pour-Over Coffee Brewing Techniques: Methods, Ice Ratios, and Grinding Parameters

As the perceived temperature continues to rise, it's once again the season for pour-over enthusiasts to start researching iced brewing methods, and more questions about iced brewing techniques are coming to FrontStreet Coffee. We need to understand that the secret to delicious iced pour-over coffee lies in how to make the coffee both rich enough, flavorful enough, and sufficiently cold.

The Extraction Approach for Iced Pour-Over

As we all know, delicious pour-over coffee requires finding the right extraction rate and concentration, typically achieved by adjusting grinding degree, water temperature, ratio, pouring technique, and equipment to coordinate with each other.

Compared to hot pour-over, iced coffee introduces the element of ice, which doesn't play a role in extraction. Therefore, to ensure that the extracted flavor compounds aren't significantly diminished, other parameters need to be adjusted based on hot pour-over methods. The most common approaches include using a finer grind, adjusting the coffee-to-water ratio, and changing pouring techniques. FrontStreet Coffee doesn't recommend increasing water temperature, as high temperatures can easily release bitter compounds, and over-extraction is difficult to remedy.

Coffee-to-Water-to-Ice Ratio

Since ice replaces part of the water that would normally be poured, it's separated and doesn't directly participate in the coffee grounds extraction, equivalent to what's known as "bypass water." After testing various coffee beans' iced brewing recipes, FrontStreet Coffee concluded that a coffee-to-water ratio between 1:10 and 1:12 works best. Too little water results in insufficient flavor extraction; too much water doesn't leave enough "space" for the ice to work its magic, causing the coffee to become diluted before it cools down.

In iced pour-over, ice serves two purposes: cooling and dilution. Therefore, the amount of ice used depends on achieving rapid cooling of the coffee while avoiding excessive dilution that would make the coffee watery. Through multiple brewing trials, a 1:5 coffee-to-ice ratio ensures that all ice melts while properly cooling the coffee. For example, with 15 grams of coffee grounds, you would need 150 grams of water and 75 grams of ice.

When all the coffee liquid drips into the ice in the lower pot, stir or shake continuously to quickly bring the coffee temperature down to around 5-10°C (the server should feel ice-cold to touch). At this point, some small ice pieces that melt slowly may float on the surface. If you don't want these ice pieces to continue diluting the coffee, you can remove them, but be sure to taste the coffee promptly to prevent its flavor from being affected by room temperature.

Adjusting to a Finer Grind

Using a finer grind serves two purposes: compensating for the shortened extraction time caused by reduced water volume, and allowing faster release of coffee compounds. For example, with the EK43s grinder used by FrontStreet Coffee, if a coffee is brewed with a setting of 10 for hot pour-over, it would be adjusted to 9.5 for iced brewing. If measured using a #20 sieve screen, the grind size for iced brewing should have a pass-through rate between 82-83%.

Adjusting Pouring Technique

Similar to adjusting the grind, modifying the pouring technique compensates for the shortened extraction time caused by reduced water volume. For instance, with 15 grams of coffee, iced brewing only requires 150 grams of water. If you pour normally, the time would be significantly shortened, so adjustments to your pouring technique are necessary. FrontStreet Coffee achieves this by reducing water flow and appropriately increasing the number of pour stages, maintaining a total brewing time between 1 minute 40 seconds to 1 minute 50 seconds.

Keeping Coffee Cold

When preparing iced pour-over, FrontStreet Coffee uses 100 grams of high-hardness large ice cubes and pre-chills the cups in the refrigerator. This serves two purposes: ensuring the ice melts slightly slower, and preventing the coffee from warming to room temperature too quickly, which would affect its taste.

If not following the standard coffee-to-ice-to-water ratio for extraction, alternative methods like "ice pouring" or "ice-separation cooling" can be employed. Ice pouring involves pouring concentrated brewed coffee over a large amount of ice, repeating this process several times to achieve cooling. This method minimizes the negative dilution effect compared to directly adding ice, though it consumes more ice. The ice-separation cooling method involves placing hot brewed coffee in a sealed container and rotating it quickly in ice to cool down. The advantage is that it doesn't dilute the coffee concentration and is less likely to affect the coffee's flavor profile.

Choosing the Right Coffee Beans

Not all coffee beans are particularly suitable for iced pour-over coffee, such as dark roast beans. These beans are characterized by their rich body and overall balance, but they don't display the bright, elevated flavors of medium-light roasts. While hot pour-over can highlight their characteristics, when made into iced pour-over, they predominantly exhibit roasty, burnt flavors, with thinner body and decreased overall balance, potentially bringing out unpleasant textures at low temperatures.

Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee recommends using medium-light roast, flavor-forward coffee beans for iced brewing, resulting in a cleaner taste profile. Examples include Kenya Assalia, Costa Rica Strawberry Sugar, and Ethiopia Natural Red Cherry... Of course, if you prefer dark roast coffee exclusively, iced brewing might still be your cup of tea.

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