A Guide to Making Iced Pour-Over Coffee! What's the Right Coffee-to-Water Ratio? Can You Use Stainless Steel Ice Cubes Instead?

The Challenge of Iced Pour-Over Coffee

As we all know, to quickly obtain a refreshing glass of iced pour-over coffee, we use ice cubes to rapidly cool down hot-brewed coffee. However, since ice cubes melt into water as the temperature rises, causing dilution of the coffee, we don't use conventional extraction methods. Instead, we apply the "re-forge" extraction concept of high concentration and low extraction, ensuring the coffee maintains an appropriate concentration even after dilution.

However, the drawback of this approach is that the extracted coffee lacks certain compounds, making its overall expression less complete compared to the original. For example, there are fewer flavor notes, and the aftertaste is not as long-lasting. Many friends reading this might wonder: is there a way to lower the coffee's temperature while still achieving complete extraction?

An Innovative Cooling Solution

Indeed, there is! The stainless steel ice cubes used in FrontStreet Coffee's previous experimental article can achieve this purpose. Generally, these ice cubes are designed to maintain the temperature of whiskey poured into a glass, with cooling not being their primary function, so their cooling effect isn't particularly significant. FrontStreet Coffee also mentioned this limitation in the previous article. But what if we use quantity to our advantage?

By increasing the quantity, we can double the cooling effect. This not only allows the coffee to reach a relatively low temperature but also ensures complete extraction! Perfect, FrontStreet Coffee is quite clever! However, while imagination is wonderful, whether reality matches our expectations still requires experimental verification. So, let's give it a try! Next, let's see if stainless steel ice cubes can truly accomplish this task perfectly!

The Brewing Experiment

Brewing Experiment Due to insufficient quantity of stainless steel ice cubes, FrontStreet Coffee brought out some long-dormant Paragon ice spheres, which have a slightly better cooling effect than stainless steel cubes.

To better perceive the differences between the two methods, FrontStreet Coffee will use a medium-light roast coffee bean with rich floral notes—Panama Boquete Geisha—for this brew. Because floral notes are more difficult to detect compared to other flavors, this makes it the most suitable coffee bean for this experiment. Alright, without further ado, let's begin our experiment! The extraction parameters are as follows:

Regular Ice Brew Experiment

• 15g coffee grounds, Ek43 setting 9.5
• 1:10 ratio (150ml)
• 92°C water temperature
• Three-stage pour
• V60 dripper
• 120g ice (4 cubes)

Stainless Steel Ice Experiment

• 15g coffee grounds, Ek43 setting 10
• 1:15 ratio (225ml)
• 92°C water temperature
• Three-stage pour
• V60 dripper
• 6 stainless steel ice cubes

Experimental Results

Since neither group achieved uniform cooling of the coffee after brewing, we used a spoon to stir both. After stirring, the regular ice brew coffee temperature was 7°C, while the stainless steel ice sphere group reached 17°C. Now, let's move on to the tasting session!

The Geisha coffee from the regular ice brew group exhibited bright citrus acidity, subtle jasmine floral notes, and a refreshing green tea sensation. Since the ice cubes didn't completely melt, the entire cup had an appropriate concentration and tasted exceptionally refreshing. The Geisha coffee from the stainless steel ice cube group, because the temperature wasn't extremely low, didn't feel overly icy when consumed. However, the flavors of jasmine, citrus, honey, and green tea were all prominent, with a longer-lasting aftertaste. Combined with a touch of coolness, it can be said to be quite excellent as well!

Conclusion

In conclusion, both methods have their advantages! One aligns better with the iced brewing concept, while the other offers more complete flavor expression. If you don't have particularly high requirements for temperature, using stainless steel ice cubes to obtain a completely extracted iced pour-over would be an excellent choice. However, if you want to immediately, quickly, and simply drink a refreshingly cool iced pour-over, then using regular ice cubes would be more appropriate.

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473