With the first truly warm days the ice coffee season is approaching, fast! Being a huge coffee lover I like to enjoy my fixation hot in the morning and, during summer, ice cold in the afternoon.
My first try at an iced coffee was to pour some chilled soy milk over my usual espresso and throw in some ice cubes. Couldn’t have been further away from a real iced coffee.
What is the key to the very best homemade iced coffee I ever had? I did some reading around to find out that for a real, tasty, amazing ice coffee you need cold brewed coffee. So I made my own.
What is there to love about cold brewed coffee?
Well, for once, caffeine is soluble in hot water, only, so cold brewed coffee is very low in caffeine. Why would I ever want to drink coffee low in caffeine? Because I love the flavor but am also very sensitive to caffeine, so I can’t have more than one espresso a day. But, I can have one or two more glasses of ice coffee and still have my sleep.
Second, the rich flavors of the coffee beans are a lot more dominant in cold brewed coffee as it is soaking for a longer time. I’m not a coffee gourmet, I always found it slightly silly when someone would say that a coffee speciality had “chocolate-like notes”. I didn’t understand this until I had my first sip of this deliciousness.
For 6 cups of cold brewed coffee you’ll need:
250g or 9 oz finely ground coffee
2 L or 8 cups filtered water
12-24 hours
Yes, you really need filtered water to do this (or any other tea or coffee). Feel free to play around with different kinds of coffee. Mostly, I use my favorite everyday arabica for this.
Let’s brew some coffee!
- Put ground coffee in a big bowl and add water, mix well. Cover the bowl with foil or your whole flat/house is going to smell like coffee (which is wonderful but would drive any coffee lover insane…) and let stand for at least a night or even a whole day to get a stronger brew.
- Filter your coffee over a double cheesecloth, or if you don’t have any, use any clean textile that is woven tightly enough. Nothing fancy, I used a brand new textile tissue that I washed and ironed previously.
- I didn’t want to lose even one drop so when I got to the solids at the bottom I squeezed it with my hands, lol!
Actually, this is not absolutely necessary, but I just couldn’t give up on any amount of coffee. However, my hands had a wonderful coffee scent for a whole day and the circulation improved a lot in my always ice cold hands due to caffeine absorbing through my skin… 🙂
All this results in approx. 6 cups of cold brewed coffee with a wonderful scent and rich flavors. Stored in closed bottles in the fridge it can last up to a month but it never makes it that long… 😉
- For 6 cups of cold brewed coffee you'll need:
- 250g or 9 oz finely ground coffee
- 2 L or 8 cups filtered water
- 12-24 hours
- Put ground coffee in a big bowl and add water, mix well. Cover the bowl with foil or your whole flat/house is going to smell like coffee (which is wonderful but would drive any coffee lover insane...) and let stand for at least a night or even a whole day to get a stronger brew.
- Filter your coffee over a double cheesecloth, or if you don't have any, use any clean textile that is woven tightly enough. Nothing fancy, I used a brand new textile tissue that I washed and ironed previously.
- I didn't want to lose even one drop so when I got to the solids at the bottom I squeezed it with my hands, lol!
With a big batch of cold brewed coffe it’s a work of mere seconds to make a great iced coffee. Usually I have approx. 1/2 cup of cold brewed coffee with ice cubes and some plant based milk. What I love most about this is that I can have my 1-2 cups of deliciousness with a little kick and my sleep at night!
The sight of a big cup of iced coffee always makes my heart skip a beat… 🙂
I hope you see how simple it is to make your very own iced coffee and try it next weekend or pin it yourself for later:
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