No more watered-down or stale summer iced coffee! If you love the sound of that, you’ll love the sound of this: the Japanese brew method for iced coffee “flash freezes” your coffee, ensuring that all of the beans’ natural aromatics and flavor notes are preserved. Best of all, brewing is easy, quick, and requires only a small modification to your current drip brew method.
Materials needed: Your drip brewer, ground coffee, water, and ice cubes.
Step 1: Measure out your water, coffee, and ice cubes. For two 8-ounce glasses of brewed coffee, use 5.5 to 6 tablespoons of ground coffee (2.5 to 3-ounces), 8-ounces of water, and 8-ounces of ice cubes. Japanese-style iced coffee splits the water into water and ice to prevent dilution, which occurs when brewed coffee is pour over ice. If you don’t have a food scale at home, use 8 ice cubes from a standard ice cube tray. Most American ice cube trays have 1-ounce cube cups. Place your ice cubes in the bowl of your brewer and the grounds in the filter basket.
Step 2: Boil water. If you have a thermometer, ideally, you want to get the water between 195 and 205 degrees Fahrenheit. If you do not have a thermometer, wait 5 seconds after the water has stopped boiling before pouring the water onto your coffee grounds.
Step 3: Brew as usual! If you are using a pour-over method, the grounds may look heavy or under-extracted but that is fine! The ice cubes dilute the concentrated coffee to the proper extraction level.
Step 4: Give your brewed coffee a swirl to encourage a melting.
Step 5: Pour and enjoy!
Japanese-style iced coffee preserves your coffee’s splendid complexity and sweetness in the simplest way. This brew method works with any drip brewer. If you travel with your coffee, you can also brew right into a mason jar or cup using any single cup cone filter. This is a wonderful, quick way to make a great summer coffee. If you want to see a live demonstration, click here. Enjoy!
(A poorly shot action video of Japanese iced coffee brewing!).
Coffee with the Queen 