How to Make the Best Iced Coffee
It’s summertime, and you know what that means? It’s iced coffee season. Yes, believe it or not, there are people who specifically switch over their drink order to fit with the weather outside. They wait all year for their favorite drink to fit their aesthetic.
Yet, if you’re someone who loves iced coffee, but you don’t love what it’s doing to your wallet, this blog is for you. It’s all about making the best iced coffee yourself. Say good-bye to the $5/day fee. You’re your own barista now!
- Buy high-quality beans
If you want to make any type of coffee at home, high-quality beans are the way to begin. High-quality coffee typically balances acidity, sweetness, and bitterness in a single sip. For ice coffee in particular, select something that is a low-acidic medium roast with caramel or chocolate notes.
We recommend Brazilian Cerrado from our own Java D’oro collection. Our roasted coffee beans and grounds taste delectable in iced coffee form.
- Make coffee ice cubes
Your ice coffee may taste incredible when you first make it, but what about 30 to 60 minutes in? It may be kind of watery after the ice cubes have started to melt and diluted your brew. Unless you enjoy your watered-down iced coffee (there are a few outliers in every group), better ice coffee is all about making coffee ice cubes.
Take leftover coffee from your coffee pot one more and pour it into an ice cube tray. When you pop them out, you’ll have coffee cubes that are ideal for your ice coffee because they’ll add flavor to your brew as they melt. Test them out and see how you like them. You can even get fancy by adding flavor (chocolate, caramel, etc.) to them before they freeze. Again, when your cubes melt, they’ll add magic back into your drink.
- Make your own simple syrup
For those who like sugar in their coffee, this is a problem for iced coffee alone. Sweetened coffee tastes delicious, but when you mix the coffee and sugar with cold ingredients you often end up with a grainy mess. For this reason, better iced coffee is made with simple syrup. This simple solution (no pun intended!) is easy and only requires about 30 minutes. You’ll mix equal parts water and sugar in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil until the sugar has dissolved. Once you allow it to cool, you have your syrup that you can save and use in your coffee.
- Use filtered water
Is your coffee just not what you want it to be and you’re not sure why? Iced coffee shouldn’t be hard to make at home, but if you still prefer what you buy elsewhere, then there’s something to that. While people will purchase high-quality beans and get fancy with their process, sometimes they’re skipping another important ingredient. They won’t use properly filtered water, which makes up roughly 97 to 98.5 percent of coffee. Try it…it’ll likely make all the difference.
Final thoughts
These four easy and tangible steps to making better iced coffee can help you up your game like never before. It’s an easy and cheap treat to keep you upbeat all summer long. Happy iced coffee season!