Iced Coffee

You might be thinking to yourself, a post on iced coffee? Really?

Well in answer to your question, yes. For two reasons. One – after the last two posts, I figured I had to tone it down a bit, and two – the real reason – if you’ve ever made iced coffee at home, you’ll most likely know, there’s a lot to be desired. I’m talking about a really good, smooth, tasty, another adjective, and just plain old awesome cup of iced coffee, and if you’re not sure what that is, well I beckon you to make this iced coffee, and then you will know, and you will thank me, and all will be good.

Coffee beans come in two basic varieties, Arabica and Robusta, the former being regarded as the better of the two. Coffee is really a fruit, that looks a little like a cherry, and has a “pit” on the inside, which is it’s bean. The bean is removed from the fruit, allowed to dry and ferment, and then they are roasted. The roast, which can range from light to medium to a dark roast, is based on how long it’s roasted for, and what the color appears like afterwards. Personally, I always go for a medium roast, whether I’m making hot or cold coffee.

If you’re making coffee, and I’m talking about real coffee, with real coffee ground, not the instant stuff, what you’re essentially doing is extracting flavors that are in the ground up coffee by means of hot water. From a chemistry stand point (seriously? again with the chemistry? Did you not learn your lesson?) the extraction happens because there are flavor/aroma molecules that get “soaked” up by the water, and like most chemical mumbo-jumbo, this whole shebang happens faster in hot water. However you don’t want every last flavor molecule extracted out of the coffee, because there are some bitter and astringent flavors in there, so the trick especially with making hot coffee is finding the right temperature, the right grind size, the right amount of time water and coffee are in contact…But since the title of this post is “iced coffee” we’re not going to get into hot coffee now! Onward to iced coffee.

In regards to extracting the flavors, the whole chemical reaction can and will take place in cold water, but it just takes longer, a lot longer…Instead of 4 minutes, more like 12 hours.The nice thing about cold brewing your coffee is that it doesn’t extract all those harsh flavanoids, and hence therefore it will be awesomely tasty! And gregarious! And voracious, definitely voracious. What I’m trying to say is, this cold brewed cup of coffee will be like no other cup o` joe you’ve had before. It will be a little sweet, a little fruity, and not as harsh as regular coffee.

The grind size of the bean also makes a difference, but I understand not many people grind their own coffee, and to be honest it will work with whatever grind size you use, although it might be better with a finer grind size. And as for proportion, different places will say different ratios of coffee grind to water, anywhere from 1:3 to 1:4 coffee:water is fine. I use 1 cup of grind and 4 cups of water.

I find that the easiest way to make this is to put a cup of ground coffee in a French press, and 4 cups of water

mix it all up, and set aside for anywhere from 8-24 hours.

This is what it looked like the next day

Now probably the most important part is to make sure you get rid of all of the grind. By pressing down on the plunger, it will remove most of it, but it won’t remove all of the grind, so to do that, I pour it through my drip coffee filter.

Like so:

 

You’ll notice, it’s not going to be really filtering out that much, and you might be thinking to yourself, what’s the big deal? But take a look

That would have been in your coffee, and that my friend is not good eats.

Now all you have to do is pour over ice, and enjoy the realization that for probably 1/10th of the price of an iced coffee, you have just made one that’s 100 times better.

Do you really need a recipe for this?

Fine, but only because you asked nicely.

Ingredients:

• Finely ground medium roast coffee ~1 cup
• 4 cups water

Special Equipment:

• French Press
• Drip-style coffee filter, with paper filter

Directions:

1. Put coffee grind and water in French press, and let seep overnight, or up to 24 hours. It can be in your fridge, in your counter, in your dishwasher, or washing machine, or under the sink.
2. When ready, push down plunger in French press, place paper filter, in um your filter, and pour coffee over the filter.
3. Pour over ice, and enjoy.