The Best Iced Coffee I've Made (So Far)

Here's how I've been making complex and dynamic iced coffee at home! This method aims to make iced coffee that tastes the closest to a well-extracted hot brew. This means, brewing hot, minimizing oxygen contact, and cooling down to preserve the most complexities (acidity, sweetness, body, etc.). You get the best results using a light or ultra light coffee as it creates a dynamic iced coffee (acidity!!!) that is perfect for a refreshing summer drink. Let me know what you all think!

HOW TO:
-Brew hot however you'd like! (I like pour-over the best for this)
-Cover your carafe with saran wrap/seal it. MINIMIZE OXYGEN CONTACT.
-Stick it in the fridge and serve when chilled.

Faster Method:
-Take the hot brew
-Cover with saran wrap
-Put the carafe in an ice bath and swirl until cooled

Crazy Method:
-Brew directly into a vacuum canister or carafe surrounded by dry ice to instantly chill

Do keep in mind this method requires patience as you need to wait until your brew is cooled down! I have been brewing with the saran wrap fridge method the night before and enjoying nice iced coffee in the day. I also believe the rate at which you cool allows you to preserve the most volatiles (acidity) in the brew so cooling it down faster is better, but I think the saran wrap method works well enough!

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Timestamps:
HOW TO MAKE IT 0:00
What is this? + vs. Iced Pour-Over 2:25
vs. Cold Brew 4:11
Inspirations for this method 4:56
Bad Iced Coffee / Storage and Container Considerations / Coffee Usage 6:30
Cooling considerations 8:15
Using an Ice Bath to Cool Faster 9:10
What Beans to use 11:00
Other Considerations (Dry Ice) 11:20
Final Considerations 12:45

Filming Equipment:

[elliottstrahan]

step 1: brew v60
step 2: run coffee through dry-ice-immersed copper wort chiller with rotary pump outflow into pure argon chamber with one-way valve
step 3: enjoy your lavazza super crema as god intended

[LanceHedrick]

Steel cubes or stone cubes that are frozen. No dilution and rapid cooling. If I do iced, this is the way lol

[zachrosenfeldt]

The absolute best cold coffee I’ve had is pouring a perfectly dialed pour over into an ice tray - freeze, then brew the same exact pour over hot and pour over those cubes you froze.

[nbougeard]

10:01 if you have a seal with the wrap, you have a fixed amount of air inside the carafe. cold air is denser than hot air, so as the air cools down it occupies less space, lowering the pressure inside. So the ambient air outside, with its ambient pressure, pushes the wrap down harder than the air inside is pushing up.

[errorBrainNotFound]

It stays above 90F most of the year here in south east Georgia so cold coffee is almost exclusively what i drink👌🏼thanks for another great vid!

[cjlafleur]

So glad people are innovating on this. I do kind of miss my iced drinks. Since becoming a coffee hobbyist most of my coffee is hot when I used to love cold coffee.

[primejh]

would love for you to try the hyperchiller as well 😃

[MrVeslo]

To save on plastic use you can do pour over in a "air tight" mug like Zojirushi or similar and just leave it in the fridge

[denny]

Awesome! Was just looking for a cold coffee recipe.

[dickensyuen]

if you wanna get rid of the oxygen you can try put the brewed coffee into a ziploc (it should be fine as the bag can restrain hot liquid ) and put into a ice water bath, it will squeeze most of the air out, after its cool down just zip it and put into fridge ^^

[outinlawrence]

Thank you for your great review and so nice technique. Can’t wait to try this iced coffee in this summer.

[Jarisuper]

How about using the freezer instead of the fridge?

[mechanicalmarmol]

Hey Brian, you should try brewing the coffee over stainless steel (or stone) "ice" cubes. They won't dilute it and as long as you use enough cubes it should be very fast.

[rko]

here's my --very extra-- extremely fast cooling method:

get a copper pan, preferably with tin lining which conducts faster than thin steel lining, copper is the third best food safe material for conducting heat.

separately, boil some water, put in salt until it won't dissolve any more, discard leftover salt, freeze the salt solution, after a day it'll be -18 or whatever your freezer is.

brew yer bean,
immediately pour into pot, hold pot (by hand, don't just put it on bottom of salt water ice bath) and switl while keeping where the whirlpool of coffee is under water level, this should be the fastest method of cooling possible with cheap home equipment.

make sure to move the pan through the water as well, as heat transfers outward, you create a heat core near the pan which equalizes the temperature of the water and the pan, so break it up by moving and cool the water.

bonus:
you can create your own ACTUAL ice packs with this salt solution by sealing them in sous-vide bags, normal ice packs only cool at 0 degrees, so you can't take ice cream in your cooler with you, if you pre chill your cooler, then drop in your ice cream and top off with the diy ice packs (heat rises up so always put on top), you can actually transport frozen goods for a slim couple hours.

[taylorwhite]

good ideas. in the past, I would take a frozen boston shaker, brew hot coffee, shake in freezing shaker, drink- no dilution

[omarpixel]

Whoa that was fast lol, thank you for doing this!
EDIT: Btw, regarding potential ice wastage, you could probably simply reserve the ice/water used for the brew for future uses.

[derekhowell]

I'm also a SEY fan boi all of their roasts are simply amazing.

[GoTellJesusSaves]

Have you tried using frozen stainless steel balls to cool the coffee in seconds?

●Stainless steel or granite balls or cubes only take about 3 hours to get to freezer temp.

●For fastest results, you can use a frozen thick ceramic/stoneware/glass cup/container.

●Freeze the balls/cubes inside the ceramic/stone/glass container in your freezer. (At least 3 hours)

●Pour the fresh brew into it, cover and place it back in the freezer.
I don't recommend brewing into the ceramic cup, as the time, steam and heat created will warm it up much faster. (Unless you can drip from above, not touching) Though it will still work, provided you have enough weight of stainless balls/cubes.

●Will take only seconds to chill.

●The amount of frozen stainless steel balls/cubes will affect the time it takes.
Using enough frozen stainless, you can effectively make it cool down instantly.

●Lastly, you can put an open double walled vacuum mug/tumbler and lid in the freezer at the same time. When you're finished cooling the coffee down, pour the cooled coffee in it to drink from. It will keep your drink cold for hours.

[ludog]

can also do an iced americano if you've got a coffee dialed in for espresso. If you want the brew to cool faster, you can also brew into a milk frothing pitcher which is usually metal and will cool faster, which avoids flashing glass from high to low temps which can cause it to crack if not tempered.

[afrians]

I use stainless steel ice cube (7pcs), ready to drink instantly