Can Light Roast Coffee Beans Be Used for Iced Pour-Over? How to Best Cool Hot Coffee While Preserving Flavor?

The Ultimate Guide to Iced Pour-Over Coffee: Four Extraction Methods for Perfect Summer Brewing

As the perceived temperature briefly soars, Guangzhou, where FrontStreet Coffee is located, begins to enter a Schrödinger's summer, and iced coffee naturally returns to the top of the shop's sales. As everyone's favorite, iced pour-over not only allows you to choose your favorite coffee beans but also adds an icy texture, making it rich yet refreshing—truly an "essential remedy" for high-temperature weather.

Taking advantage of today's still bright sunshine, FrontStreet Coffee has compiled a collection of extraction methods for iced pour-over, all zero-barrier and simple enough that anyone can master them. Be sure to save this guide!

What You Must Know About Making Iced Pour-Over Coffee

Regardless of the coffee extraction method, the parameters we focus on actually revolve around two key points: extraction rate and concentration. The first, extraction rate, directly affects whether the coffee tastes sour, balanced, or bitter. The second, concentration, changes our perception during tasting—too concentrated can easily create a harsh sensation while masking flavors, while too diluted is like drinking water. Therefore, as long as both ultimately fall within appropriate ranges, the combinations between parameters can be flexibly adjusted.

Like many coffee brewing methods, iced pour-over is derived from the original hot pour-over framework. In conventional hot pour-over, we coordinate grind size, water temperature, coffee-to-water ratio, equipment, and pouring technique to achieve suitable extraction rate and concentration for a cup of coffee. Iced pour-over, however, adds ice cubes on top of hot pour-over to cool down the resulting coffee. So if we directly apply the hot pour-over formula + ice cubes, although the coffee achieves the appropriate extraction rate, the concentration gets diluted because the ice melts into water, making it inevitably taste like bland, flavorless iced coffee water.

Therefore, to get a delicious cup of iced pour-over, the core issue is solving how to maintain a moderate concentration after the coffee cools down. The most common approaches include changing ratios, adjusting grind size, using technique intervention, and physical cooling. FrontStreet Coffee has organized these into roughly four methods.

Method One: High Concentration & High Extraction Method

High concentration and high extraction, as the name suggests, means high concentration and high extraction rate. High concentration is easy to understand—it ensures that the brewed coffee still has good flavor and maintains a full texture after adding ice cubes. The operation is also very simple: appropriately reduce the water amount and adjust the grind to be finer.

With the same water amount, increasing extraction rate means extracting more flavor from the coffee. Iced pour-over requires us to separate some hot water and replace it with ice cubes, so the water amount is less than conventional hot pour-over, and extraction time shortens accordingly, reducing later-stage substances and thus lowering extraction rate. Therefore, the "high extraction" mentioned by FrontStreet Coffee here actually means having the brewer extract as many soluble substances as possible within limited water, which we can coordinate through technique adjustments.

Here, FrontStreet Coffee uses medium-light roast coffee beans—Ethiopia Kaffa Forest—as an example, with iced pour-over parameters for high concentration and high extraction as follows:

Coffee Dose: 15 grams
10x Hot Water: 150 grams
5x Ice Amount: 75 grams
Water Temperature: 92°C
Grind Size: 83% pass-through rate on #20 sieve (EK43s setting 9, C40 setting 22)
Dripper: Hario V60
Technique: Three-stage pouring

First, place 75g of ice cubes in the server, then pour 15g of ground coffee into the filter cup and gently level it. For the first stage, use a small water flow of 3ml/s to pour 30g of hot water in small circles from the center outward for a 30-second bloom. After 30 seconds, pour the second stage of 60g water using the same technique, being careful not to raise the liquid level too high, which can easily cause under-extraction. When the coffee liquid is about to dry up, pour all remaining 60g of hot water at 3ml/s flow rate, ensuring extraction time falls between 1 minute 50 seconds to 2 minutes.

The Kaffa Forest brewed this way not only has rich fruit flavors like lemon and blueberry but also highlights the sweet fragrance of melon seeds, with a light texture and balanced sweet-sour-bitter notes. However, since there will be some small ice fragments remaining after brewing, if you don't want the coffee to be further diluted, either drink it quickly before the ice melts or remove the ice first.

Method Two: Ice-Flash Chilling Method

In the first method, FrontStreet Coffee used high-density square old ice cubes, which means they dissolve slowly, so the coffee liquid can cool down quickly while avoiding the risk of over-dilution. If we have smaller molds at home and make ice particles that melt faster, using the same parameters to brew iced coffee will yield slightly inferior results, generally表现为重水感、风味弱.

Therefore, to reduce the situation of too low concentration caused by excessive ice melting, we can use the "ice-flash chilling" method for cooling. This method keeps the brewing parameters unchanged—we just need to prepare double the amount of ice (150g), then find a filter that can hold ice cubes and flowing liquid. Here, FrontStreet Coffee directly uses the filter cup, then pours the brewed coffee liquid directly onto the ice cubes, achieving cooling through continuous rinsing.

The Kaffa Forest brewed this way is better than the previous method in both richness and flavor layers, predominantly featuring aromas of yellow peach, citrus, and apricot, with a smooth texture and a sweet aftertaste.

Method Three: Stirring Method

Within the same time, adding stirring motion in pour-over can use external force to increase the extraction efficiency of hot water on coffee grounds, thereby increasing flavor concentration. For light to medium roast beans, stirring during the water pouring stage can accelerate the release of sweet and sour substances, giving the coffee better juice-like texture and floral aroma. The corresponding iced pour-over parameters are as follows:

Coffee Dose: 15 grams
Hot Water: 160g
Ice Cubes: 80g
Grind Size: 80% pass-through rate on #20 sieve (EK43s setting 9.5, C40 setting 24)
Dripper: Hario V60
Three-stage: 30g, 80g+stirring, 50g

Before pouring, still place the ice cubes in the server and pour all the coffee grounds. The first bloom stage remains unchanged—use a small water flow of 3-4ml/s to pour 30g in circles from the center outward. After 30 seconds, pour 80g of hot water in circles from inside to outside, slightly raising the water level. When the timer scale shows 110g, stop pouring and take out the prepared small spoon to stir 5 circles along the filter wall in one direction, then wait for the coffee liquid to slowly flow down.

When the coffee bed is about to be exposed, pour the remaining 50g of hot water into the center with a small flow. Wait until all the coffee liquid has dripped through, then remove the filter cup to end extraction, with time approximately falling between 2 minutes to 2 minutes 10 seconds. Finally, shake the server to melt all the ice cubes inside, and you can begin tasting.

The iced pour-over Kaffa Forest with added stirring motion has richer sweet and sour sensations, predominantly featuring fruits like pomelo, orange, yellow peach, and sweet tangerine, with a tea-like aftertaste. The final ice cubes give the coffee a refreshing quality, making it taste full of juice-like texture.

Method Four: Ice Bath Cooling Method

In addition to the three relatively common methods above, FrontStreet Coffee's collection has one more luxurious method—"ice bath cooling." This method requires no adjustment to grind size or coffee-to-water ratio, with the coffee liquid relying entirely on external ice water for physical cooling throughout the process. This can reduce the bland taste caused by ice melting into the coffee, but the disadvantage is that it requires both a large amount of ice and a long cooling process. Before brewing, we need to prepare a thermometer first, with corresponding brewing parameters as follows:

Coffee Dose: 15 grams
Coffee-to-Water Ratio: 1:15
Grind Size: 78% pass-through rate on #20 sieve (EK43s setting 10, C40 setting 26)
Water Temperature: 92°C
Dripper: Hario V60
Pouring Technique: Three-stage

Pour 30g of water for the first stage for a 30-second bloom, then pour 95g at a medium flow rate of 5ml/s from the center outward in circles, completing in about 50 seconds. When the water level drops to 2/3 of the coffee bed, pour the remaining 100g of hot water using the same technique, completing dripping in about 2 minutes 10 seconds. Then place the entire pot of coffee in an ice-water mixture for cooling, and when the thermometer shows the temperature has dropped to 10°C, it's ready to taste.

The Kaffa Forest cooled by ice bath has very clear sweetness. Because there's no ice cube interference, you can immediately feel white floral aromas and citrus fruit acidity upon entry, while also featuring characteristics of sweet melon, sugar tangerine, and blueberry. The sweet and sour notes are full and rich, making it the most layered cup among the four methods.

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Tel:020 38364473