How to Make Pour-Over Iced Coffee: Tips and Tricks for Fruity and Floral Flavors?

Cold beverages are something hard to give up in summer, and pour-over coffee is no exception.

For most of us, the requirements for a good glass of iced pour-over are actually quite simple: it needs to be sufficiently cold while maintaining its proper coffee flavor. However, if you want your iced coffee to have a sweet and sour taste like juice, FrontStreet Coffee believes you need to master a few small techniques.

Which Coffee Beans Have Better Juice-like Qualities?

There are many types of acidity in coffee, and the acidity often found in specialty coffees is closely related to fruit acids. On the flavor wheel, we describe the acidity profiles of coffee using various common fruits, such as citrus acid, lemon acid, malic acid, peach-plum acid, cherry acid, grape acid, apple acid... Different fruit acidities also reflect the unique terroir characteristics of coffee from different regions.

When selecting coffee beans, FrontStreet Coffee suggests starting with beans from African and Central-South American regions, prioritizing those with flavor descriptions tending toward juicy fruits.

If you enjoy acidity, choose FrontStreet Coffee's Kenya Washed, where you'll experience rich flavors of cherry tomatoes, smoked plums, and black plums. For those who prefer sweet and sour profiles, FrontStreet Coffee's Sun-dried Elida Estate offers characteristics of peaches, red grapes, and berries. If you prefer bright and refreshing types, you can select the washed FrontStreet Coffee Ethiopian coffee beans, which are easier to brew and yield acidity notes of lemon, apple, and honey pomelo.

Here, FrontStreet Coffee has selected a recently introduced FrontStreet Coffee Kaffa Forest to demonstrate. This coffee bean uses washed processing, featuring elegant white floral aromas and juicy fruit flavors of sweet orange, dried apricot, honey peach, green grapes, and yellow lemon.

How to Brew Iced Pour-over with Strong Juice-like Characteristics?

Regarding the parameters for iced pour-over, FrontStreet Coffee mentioned a formula in an article two months ago: Iced pour-over = coffee grounds (fine grind) + 10x hot water + 5x ice cubes. For a single serving using 15g of coffee grounds, this means 150g of hot water and 75g of ice cubes.

Here, combined with medium-light roast coffee beans featuring fruity acidity, we recommend using water temperature between 91-93°C, small circular pouring with a narrow stream, and a three-stage pouring technique. This allows the extraction time to fall between 1 minute 50 seconds to 2 minutes, easily producing a pot of flavorful iced coffee.

The juice-like sensation in coffee typically comes from the rich fruity aroma detected by the nose combined with the sweet, sour, and juicy sensations in the mouth during tasting, reminiscent of eating certain fruits. When applied to today's iced pour-over theme, this means extracting both the acidic aromatic compounds from the early stages and pursuing the sweet notes from the middle and later stages to achieve the sweet and sour juice-like taste. Such requirements cannot be met by water flow stirring alone, so FrontStreet Coffee adds another action: stirring.

Iced pour-over parameters:
Coffee beans: FrontStreet Coffee Ethiopia Washed Kaffa Forest
Amount: 16g
Coffee-to-water ratio: 1:10 (160g hot water)
Ice cubes: 80g
Grind size: EK43s setting 9.5 (approximately 22 on C40)
Dripper: Hario V60

Three-stage pouring: 30g, 90g + stir, 40g

Before pouring, first place the ice cubes in the server and add all the coffee grounds. The first bloom stage remains unchanged - maintain a small stream and pour in a circular motion from center to outward, adding 30g.

After 30 seconds, begin pouring 90g of hot water with a larger stream in a circular motion while raising the water level. When the scale shows 120g, stop pouring and use a small spoon to stir along the inner wall of the dripper in one direction for 5 circles, then wait for the coffee to slowly drip down.

When the water in the dripper is about to run out, use the same small stream circular motion from the first stage to pour the remaining 40g of hot water. At this point, the time should be approximately 1 minute 25 seconds. Wait until all the coffee has dripped through, then remove the dripper to end extraction, which should take approximately 1 minute 55 seconds to 2 minutes 5 seconds. Finally, shake the server vigorously until all the ice cubes have melted into the coffee, and it's ready to enjoy.

This brewing method produces a washed Kaffa Forest with a very refreshing taste. Upon entry, you first experience the mouth-watering sweet and sour notes of yellow peach, sweet orange, and grapefruit, with an overall inclination toward yellow stone fruit characteristics. Due to the addition of stirring, the coffee not only has rich fruit acidity but also carries a refreshing sweetness. Under the cooling effect of ice cubes, it feels as if you're drinking a glass of refreshing, sweet juice.

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

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473