What is Black Coffee? Why is Cold Drip Coffee Expensive? How to Make Cold Brew Coffee? What's the Difference with Americano?

Black coffee generally refers to pure coffee with nothing added except water. Americano, pour-over, and cold drip are all types of black coffee. Because they don't contain any ingredients that could affect the coffee's flavor, such as milk, cream, or sugar, the coffee's taste can be expressed more purely.

As you may have noticed, cold drip coffee is often priced higher among these various black coffees. If a café sells cold drip, its price will most likely be higher than Americano or pour-over. For example, FrontStreet Coffee is a perfect case: even when using the same coffee beans for preparation, the price of cold drip is higher than Americano and pour-over.

This makes many customers curious: "Why is the price of cold drip coffee higher than other types when using the same coffee beans?"

There are Two Reasons!

The first reason is that compared to other black coffees, cold drip coffee takes longer to prepare and involves more complicated procedures!

Longer Preparation Time and More Complex Process

Regardless of the type of black coffee, their preparation requires using water as a solvent to dissolve flavor compounds from the coffee. The water temperature determines the dissolution speed! In the article "What Water Temperature Makes the Best Coffee," FrontStreet Coffee mentioned that the kinetic energy of water molecules is affected by temperature - when the water temperature is higher, the speed at which water dissolves flavor compounds is faster, and vice versa.

Most black coffees, such as pour-over and Americano, are extracted using hot water, so their preparation time isn't very long, taking only a few minutes at most. Cold drip coffee, however, is completely different. It's a type of cold brew coffee that uses very cold ice water for extraction. Due to the low water temperature, extraction efficiency is extremely low, so it often requires several hours for extraction.

Professional cold drip equipment is typically used (though not necessarily), which controls the drip speed valve to allow ice water to slowly drip as droplets, thereby extending the overall extraction time and ensuring complete extraction of the coffee. Taking FrontStreet Coffee's cold drip preparation as an example: FrontStreet Coffee typically uses 60g of coffee grounds when making cold drip coffee, with a coffee-to-liquid ratio of 1:10, and the ice water drips at a frequency of approximately 7-8 drops every 10 seconds. Under these parameters, the entire extraction process usually takes about 5-8 hours.

After extraction is complete, cold drip coffee cannot be consumed immediately because it still needs fermentation to develop its flavors. Therefore, we need to pour the freshly filtered cold drip coffee into a sealed bottle and place it in the refrigerator for "low-temperature aging." FrontStreet Coffee typically refrigerates it for fermentation for over 8 hours to ensure the cold drip develops its unique wine-like/fermented notes. Only after fermentation is complete can we truly enjoy the delicious taste of cold drip coffee!

From FrontStreet Coffee's shared cold drip preparation process, it's not difficult to see that making cold drip coffee is extremely complicated and time-consuming. A rough calculation shows that making a 600ml pot of cold drip coffee takes over 13 hours, which is actually considered relatively fast. FrontStreet Coffee's standard serving is 200ml of cold drip coffee with 1-2 ice cubes, meaning that after "endless effort" to produce 600ml of coffee, only 3 servings can be made. Whether it's pour-over or Americano coffee, making 3 servings takes at most ten minutes. In comparison, the time cost of making cold drip coffee is dozens of times higher.

Higher Material Costs

More often than not, cold drip coffee is expensive mainly due to material costs. Using the same example above, FrontStreet Coffee used 60g of coffee grounds to produce 600ml of cold drip coffee concentrate, but ultimately could only serve 3 cups. These 60g of coffee grounds, if used for pour-over coffee, could produce 4 cups, because FrontStreet Coffee's standard for pour-over is 15g of grounds per pot.

Since a cup of cold drip coffee uses more coffee grounds and therefore costs more, its selling price is typically higher than other black coffees. In summary, now you know why cold drip coffee is usually more expensive. It's because both its material costs are higher and the time required for preparation is longer~

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473