Can Cold Brew Coffee Be Heated? Should Iced Drip Cold Brew Be Made with Cold or Hot Water? What's the Difference Between Cold Brew and Regular Coffee?

Introduction to Cold Brew Coffee

Cold brew coffee has become a popular daily companion for many coffee enthusiasts due to its simple preparation process, rich flavor, and smooth texture. Especially during summer, the rich and refreshing cold brew coffee at FrontStreet Coffee has always been in high demand.

However, recently, the increasingly cold weather has significantly reduced the audience for cold brew coffee, and FrontStreet Coffee's cold brew became unsold. So this morning, FrontStreet Coffee looked at the cold brew in the refrigerator and recalled a question seen some time ago: Can cold brew coffee be heated?

Can Cold Brew Coffee Be Heated?

Upon careful consideration, although FrontStreet Coffee has tried heating various types of coffee (like pour-over coffee, latte, etc.), it seems we've never actually experimented with heating cold brew coffee. Therefore, today let's explore what heated cold brew coffee tastes like! (To be honest, although this topic might seem a bit abstract, it really is quite abstract...) But before that, let's first understand whether cold brew coffee can be heated!

Because cold brew coffee is normally served cold, many people, like FrontStreet Coffee, probably had numerous question marks upon seeing this topic. However, strictly speaking, heating cold brew coffee is actually not impossible. Why? Because cold brew coffee primarily refers to the method of extracting coffee at low temperatures. Whether it's drip-style ice-drip coffee or immersion-style cold brew coffee (also called cold brew), they both belong to the category of cold brew coffee. This is because they both use cold water to extract coffee, unlike other coffee preparation methods that use hot water. In other words, coffee extracted using cold water can be called cold brew coffee.

Due to the low temperature of cold water, extraction efficiency is not high, so using cold water for low-temperature coffee extraction requires a long time. However, precisely because of the low dissolution efficiency of cold water, the bitter substances in coffee don't dissolve excessively, and we don't need to worry about over-extraction. Generally, as long as the parameters are appropriate, the final coffee we get will have prominent flavors, a soft and smooth texture, and extremely high sweetness. Combined with the low temperature of coffee, which further reduces the perception of bitterness and acidity, cold brew coffee is typically served directly with ice after preparation, and no one deliberately heats it.

Therefore, we can know that cold brew coffee is not impossible to heat! So today, let's try what heated cold brew coffee tastes like!

How to Heat Cold Brew Coffee

Although there are many ways to heat coffee, not every method is suitable. For example, the steam wand of a coffee machine. While the steam wand allows us to heat coffee in the shortest time, the steam from the wand will dilute the coffee's concentration. Additionally, the "milk flavor" contained in the steam wand will also be incorporated into the coffee. To prevent potential issues, this simplest method obviously cannot be used. FrontStreet Coffee also doesn't recommend using heating tools like microwave ovens, because just as food placed in the refrigerator without proper sealing can absorb refrigerator odors, food placed in a microwave can easily pick up foreign odors. Finally, to ensure that cold brew coffee is not diluted or contaminated during the heating process, FrontStreet Coffee adopted the most straightforward method: direct heating. The specific steps are simple: first, we take out the cold brew from the refrigerator, then pour it into a heat-resistant container.

Turn on the induction cooker and heat until the coffee reaches about 75°C, then remove the coffee from the heat source.

Pour into the prepared cup and begin the tasting session directly.

Tasting Results and Analysis

The cold brew coffee used by FrontStreet Coffee this time was made with Honduras Sherry beans. Before heating, the cold brew coffee flavor of these beans showed rich whiskey aroma, cream, vanilla, and chocolate, with a slightly acidic taste and high sweetness. In terms of texture, it was smooth and gentle. After heating, through tasting, we could feel that the whiskey aroma was significantly weakened, the bitter notes of chocolate were enhanced, and some berry acidity began to be amplified. The flavor profile was: chocolate, berries, nuts, whiskey aroma, while the taste performance was more acidic with a bit of bitterness, lower sweetness, and the texture was not as gentle but still smooth.

It's actually not bad, not as strange as imagined. In fact, FrontStreet Coffee had already anticipated such results before preparation, because just like the latte and pour-over heating experiments FrontStreet Coffee had done before, heating coffee changes its flavor and texture. Therefore, before heating cold brew coffee, FrontStreet Coffee was already mentally prepared. There are two reasons: First, the flavor performance of coffee mainly comes from aromatic substances, most of which are volatile. Therefore, when we heat it, the originally slow-volatilizing coffee flavor substances will accelerate their loss. After the coffee heating is complete, some flavor performances are not as prominent as before.

The second reason is that temperature changes our taste buds' perception of taste. As FrontStreet Coffee mentioned earlier, one reason why cold brew coffee doesn't have prominent acidity and bitterness is partly because the low temperature of coffee reduces our perception of both. When the coffee temperature rises, the taste buds' perception of both is enhanced, so the acidity and bitterness of the coffee become more prominent and not as gentle as before. In summary, we can understand why cold brew coffee is not heated after preparation—the main reason is that after heating, various aspects of the coffee's performance are not as excellent as before! Therefore, it's not recommended to try...

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473