Why is Cold Brew Coffee Always More Expensive Than Americano? The Difference Between Cold Brew and Regular Americano Coffee

Black coffee refers to a cup of coffee that contains only water and coffee, with no other substances added that could affect the coffee's flavor! Therefore, Americano, pour-over, cold brew, moka pot coffee, and others all belong to the category of black coffee with only water added.

Then, some observant customers noticed that cold brew coffee always stands a "cup" above the rest, with cold brew coffee being priced the highest among black coffee categories in most coffee shops! Its high price forms a stark contrast with the affordable Americano! So, the question arises: Why is cold brew coffee more expensive than Americano?

Americano Coffee

Speaking of Americano, I believe everyone is already very familiar with it, as FrontStreet Coffee has shared it many times~ Simply mix properly proportioned water with extracted espresso, and you get Americano coffee. Then, you can also adjust the temperature of the Americano according to your preference: if you like hot Americano, add hot water to espresso; if you prefer iced, add ice water to espresso, making it very flexible and casual to prepare~

Cold Brew Coffee

The scope of cold brew coffee is quite broad - both ice drip and cold浸泡 belong to cold brew coffee! Because, "cold brew" actually doesn't refer to a single type of coffee, but rather a method of coffee extraction.

To be fair, almost all coffee preparation methods except cold brew use hot water to extract aromatic compounds. For example, the commonly consumed iced Americano and iced pour-over are both made by extracting aromatic compounds with hot water first and then adding ice to cool them down, achieving the iced beverage effect. Only cold brew category coffee directly uses ice water for extraction! And this difference in water temperature is part of the reason for the price difference!

1. Time Difference Caused by Water Temperature

Hot water has higher extraction efficiency, so it can quickly extract aromatic compounds from coffee, taking just a few minutes for hot water to extract all substances from the coffee; whereas ice water's extraction efficiency is completely opposite, very slow! Therefore, it needs more time to obtain sufficient aromatic compounds.

Take the relatively simple cold brew coffee (commonly referred to as cold brew coffee) for example, a pot of suitably flavored cold brew coffee requires at least 8 hours of steeping time, not to mention the more complicated ice drip coffee. Therefore, this long waiting time is one of the costs required for preparation! Of course, this cost only accounts for a small part, as the main price difference actually lies in the beans used!

2. Usage Differences of Coffee Beans

Americano is a black coffee made with espresso as the base, adding water! Besides Americano, espresso also needs to accommodate the production of other flavored milk coffees like latte, cappuccino, mocha, macchiato, etc., which requires certain standards for the roasting degree of coffee beans!

If the roast level is too light, the fresh flavor of coffee can easily be overpowered by milk, so a darker roast is needed to give coffee a heavier flavor, which can then overpower the rich and mellow milk taste! However, this also means that the bean's flavor is basically fixed on caramel, chocolate, cream, cookies, and other mellow flavors unique to dark roasts. Even if you use better beans, the flavor difference under dark roasting won't be too significant. Therefore, commercial blend beans have become the primary choice for various merchants!

Commercial blend beans refer to the combination of commercial beans from two or more producing regions. Even if a particular bean has quality issues the following year due to climate or other factors, similar flavors can be found from other places as substitutes! Moreover, due to dark roasting, the gap between commercial coffee beans and specialty coffee beans is reduced, so people's choices naturally lean towards affordable commercial coffee beans!

On the other hand, cold brew coffee mainly uses specialty coffee beans that focus on flavor. These beans can trace back to their origin information in great detail, with visualization of everything from variety, growing environment, roast level, processing, etc. Their flavor will also be superior to commercial coffee beans! Of course, to obtain concrete flavors, the various requirements for cultivation will also be higher, and costs will naturally rise. After layer upon layer of accumulation, the final price of beans obtained will be higher than commercial coffee beans.

In summary, the preparation process and bean cost are the sources of price difference between cold brew and Americano. Of course, there are shops like FrontStreet Coffee that use specialty beans originally intended for pour-over single origins as the base for espresso blends, but compared to the process and bean quantity used for cold brew, the price will still be lower~

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FrontStreet Coffee

No. 10, Bao'an Qianjie, Yandun Road, Dongshankou, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province

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