Lychee Specialty Fruit Coffee Recipe Tutorial: Is Lychee Iced Latte Worth Trying?

As temperatures climb across much of the country, lychees - that prized fruit of southern China - have been ripening in waves and steadily finding their way onto our tables.

Lychees are extraordinarily sweet, with plump, white, fleshy arils that burst with juice the moment you bite into them. The aroma is intense, and beneath all that sweetness there is a faint thread of acidity; served well chilled, they eat almost like a sweet bun. Lychees turn up in the coffee world now and then, too. The Sidamo Elto that FrontStreet Coffee released last month, for example, showed lychee-like fruity aromatics and a distinct sweetness in the cup - an impression that lingered long after the tasting.

So what would happen if we paired the fruit directly with coffee? In researching this, FrontStreet Coffee found that all sorts of lychee-and-coffee combinations already circulate online. In the spirit of "there's no harm in trying," we decided to taste-test these so-called "summer white moonlight" lychee coffees and find out whether any of them are actually worth drinking.

Version One: Lychee Jasmine Iced Americano

Ingredients: fresh lychees, ice cubes, jasmine tea, espresso

Like the many fruit-flavored coffees FrontStreet Coffee has recreated before, this Lychee Jasmine Iced Americano is built around one principle: convenience. It calls for simple ingredients and an equally simple method, with no strict ratios to worry about.

Start by peeling and seeding 5 fresh lychees. Put the pulp in a shaker and crush it to release the juice. Pour in 180ml of jasmine tea, cover, and shake so the lychee juice and the floral tea blend together.

Take a glass with a capacity of more than 250ml, add 80g of ice cubes, and strain the lychee jasmine tea into it.

Next, pull a double shot of espresso using the parameters FrontStreet Coffee calibrated today for the Warm Sun Blend: 20g of grounds extracted for 29 seconds to yield 38g of liquid. Finally, pour it gently over the ice cubes and the drink is done.

For all its refreshing components, though, this Lychee Jasmine Iced Americano was a disappointment - harshly bitter, in fact, with nothing that made you want to keep drinking. It brought to mind a rather apt online comment calling it "well water minding its own business, river water minding its own": every flavor stayed stubbornly separate. The sweetness and the bitterness never merged into anything harmonious.

Version Two: Lychee Fermented Rice Iced Latte

Ingredients: fresh lychees, ice cubes, fermented rice (jiuniang), espresso

FrontStreet Coffee came across this milk-based coffee recipe last year while looking into trending topics. It was fairly obscure then, but it has drawn attention again thanks to the lychee-season craze, and plenty of coffee lovers are recreating it at home.

The first step is the same: peel and seed 5 fresh lychees, crush the pulp firmly to extract the juice, and set it aside.

Prepare a glass of about 250ml, add 80g of ice cubes, then pour in 150g of fresh milk, 25g of fermented rice, and the fresh lychee juice. To build more layers of sweetness, you can optionally add 8-10g of syrup. Stir until everything is well combined.

Finally, pull a double shot of espresso and pour it over the mixture.

Honestly, while making it, FrontStreet Coffee half expected a culinary disaster, or at best another unremarkable fruit-and-coffee mashup. Tasting it, we found that this seemingly "exotic" pairing held a genuine surprise.

Sipped through a straw after stirring, it delivers coffee aroma, milk fragrance, and a subtle fruit acidity all at once. The grainy texture of the fermented rice adds a soft sweetness that never turns cloying; it fills out the body of the coffee while smoothing away its bitterness. The only shortcoming was that the lychee flavor came through far too faintly.

Version Three: Lychee Cold Brew

Ingredients: fresh lychees, freshly ground coffee, a cold brew pitcher (any clean container)

FrontStreet Coffee has noted before, in the article "Which fruits make the best cold brew coffee?", that a successful pairing of fresh fruit and coffee comes down to three things: whether the fruit can withstand a long steep, how to draw out its best flavors, and how to control the proportions of each element.

To make sure the lychee aroma infused the coffee fully without overwhelming it, FrontStreet Coffee first kept the cold brew ratio at 1:8 to build concentration, then added fruit pulp at a water-to-lychee ratio of 10:1.

Coffee beans: Costa Rica Washed Tarrazú
Coffee amount: 35g
Coffee-to-water ratio: 1:8
Grind setting: EK43s 9.5 / Comandante C40 22
Lychee pulp: 28g (approximately 3-4 fruits)
Steeping time: 6 hours

The first step is again to crush the pulp with a tool, then add it to the coffee, stir well, and refrigerate. After 6 hours of steeping, filter out the pulp and the coffee grounds through filter paper, and it is ready to drink.

Compared with the faint lychee presence in the first two versions, the long-steeped lychee cold brew delivers unmistakable fruit aromas. In the cup you get not only a refreshing sweetness but also the bright acidity of the coffee - icy and juicy. In this lychee coffee showdown, FrontStreet Coffee declares the cold brew the clear winner.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

If the lychee thread running through this article appeals to you, the natural place to start is FrontStreet Ethiopia Guji Hambella Natural, better known as Huakui. Grown at high altitude in the Guji Hambella area of Ethiopia, this naturally processed lot is famous for its tropical fruit aromatics - strawberry, passion fruit, jackfruit, and yes, lychee - with pronounced sweetness and almost no bitterness. It is smooth, full of juice, and often described as the coffee that least tastes like coffee.

For something with a cleaner, more delicate profile to build iced drinks around, try FrontStreet Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Gidding. Grown by a cooperative of some 300 farmers in the Worka area, this washed lot shows citrus and lemon notes with elegant white florals, finishing bright and refined. Either lot works beautifully over ice, and both make a far more convincing fruit-matched iced coffee than any syrup-based shortcut.