Is Cold Brew the Same as Cold Drip? How Many Types of Cold Brew Coffee Are There?

FrontStreet Coffee has noticed that on the self-taught coffee journey, what trips people up is often not the complex techniques or parameters, but the terminology: every time you look up one professional term, it branches into a cluster of related terms that look similar yet mean different things. Confusion follows.

Take iced coffee's summer champion, cold brew. Search for it online and several "aliases" inevitably pop up: ice drip, ice brew, cold soak, Dutch coffee, Kyoto coffee... For a moment, it's genuinely hard to tell who's who.

Among these, "ice brew coffee" is easily the vaguest concept. Some think it means cold soak; some believe it refers to ice drip; others take it for a method of steeping coffee grounds in an ice-water mixture. Don't worry—let's start with the broader category of cold brew coffee.

Understanding Cold Brew Coffee

We all know the term "cold brew coffee" is a direct translation of Cold Brew Coffee, and its popularity owes much to Starbucks' expansion and marketing. But stretch the name a little and you'll find that any black coffee extracted with cold water can technically be called "cold brew." In other words—soaked, drip-filtered, or otherwise—as long as the liquid comes from coffee grounds contacting low-temperature water, it falls within the scope of cold brew coffee.

In practice, though, since "cold brew" already existed as a concept for tea, when most people say "cold brew coffee" they specifically mean coffee made by steeping grounds in cold water for an extended period—cold soak coffee. The typical procedure: soak the grounds in room-temperature water, refrigerate for several hours, then filter out the grounds.

Cold Soak Coffee

As the classic immersion method, cold soak is simple and convenient to make, flexible in bean choice, and forgiving to execute. That makes it a fixture on café menus and one of the most popular homemade coffee styles alike.

Dutch Coffee (Ice Drip)

The other common low-temperature method belongs to the percolation family: ice drip, the process of letting a slowly melting ice-water mixture drip through the coffee grounds drop by drop for a long, extended extraction. In many English texts, ice drip isn't called "Ice Drip Coffee" at all but rather Dutch Coffee—hence the translation "Dutch coffee."

Legend has it that around the 17th century, Dutch sailors on long sea voyages tried steeping coffee grounds in cold water and discovered that coffee made this way wasn't bitter and kept well for storage and transport. The Dutch later brought this cold-drink method to Edo-period Japan through trade, where it caught on widely—hence the name: Dutch Coffee.

Whether that story is true is hard to verify, but what's certain is that the cool, multi-tiered drip towers you see in cafés today were invented by the Japanese, and ice drip coffee became popular from within Japan.

The Origin of Kyoto Coffee

Hana Fusa

In the 1950s, the owner of a Kyoto café called Hana Fusa stumbled upon this cold-extraction process and, together with a few chemistry students, developed a three-story tower-shaped ice drip pot fitted with valves, extracting the coffee through slow, even dripping of low-temperature water. At the time, the device was hailed as one of the most artistic coffee brewing contraptions.

Later, as famous Japanese equipment brands—HARIO, KINTO, Kalita—successively released the cold brew bottles and ice drip towers we know today, low-temperature black coffee swept across Japan. It wasn't until the third wave of coffee that these striking devices spread to the West, where they were dubbed Kyoto Coffee.

Understanding "Ice Brew Coffee"

Compared with cold brew and ice drip, "ice brew" rarely appears in domestic cafés. FrontStreet Coffee couldn't pin down its exact origin either, and explanations vary. The best way to understand it: "ice brew coffee" is an elegant rendering of "Cold Brew," essentially equivalent to cold brew coffee.

In FrontStreet Coffee's view, "ice brew" emphasizes the "brew"—a word whose original meaning relates to fermenting and maturing alcohol. In coffee preparation, both ice drip and cold soak go through a sealed resting phase after production: over several hours or a day or two of maturation, the soluble flavor compounds fully integrate with the water and gradually develop a fermented, wine-like texture.

So whether it's ice drip or cold soak, FrontStreet Coffee's take is this: any black coffee that has gone through that sealed resting and maturing stage can reasonably be called "ice brew coffee."

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FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Whichever cold method you choose—cold soak or ice drip—bean selection follows one rule: cold water amplifies florals and fruit while suppressing roast notes, so light-to-medium roasts work best. FrontStreet Coffee's Strawberry Candy Gesha Blend is our top pick for cold brew: Panamanian Gesha brings rose and orange, while the Costa Rican honey component adds grape, dried blueberry, and strawberry-candy sweetness—and after a short maturation in the fridge, it takes on a lovely wine-like character, making it equally brilliant for ice drip. The natural-process Ethiopia Huakui shows magnolia, cream strawberry, dried mango, guava, and black tea when cold-steeped.

For a juicier, more assertive cup, the Kenya Cherry Tomato (SL28/SL34, K72 double-washed) turns into pure cherry-tomato and plum juice over ice, while the washed Yirgacheffe Guodingding offers bright berry, floral, and honey sweetness at an everyday price—perfect for a big batch of cold soak, sealed in a clean bottle and finished within four days.