Friday, June 17, 2011

Happy Friday! Iced Coffee

This is definitely Iced Coffee weather!  It's great being able to come home & have one of these instead of always having to rely on coffee shops - besides, this way your drink doesn't melt before you get home!

 
There are quite a few methods of making Iced Coffee out there. I’ve tried making it double-strength and diluting it with ice cubes (hated it!).  I’ve also tried making it by cold-brewing overnight on the counter (didn’t like it enough!).

The way I prefer to make Iced Coffee is also the simplest method, but tastes great & gives consistent results.  The Iced Coffee won’t dilute in flavour as the ice cubes are also made of the same coffee.

Iced Coffee (makes 3-4 10-oz glasses):

The “cup” measurements of a coffeemaker don’t always reflect what you end up with, so in my automatic drip pot I use 4 rounded coffee scoops (4 x 25ml) of ground coffee, a pinch of salt, plus 5 x 8oz cups water.  This will yield: one cup of hot coffee to drink right away (bonus for the cook!), as well as 1 litre of medium-strength coffee to chill, plus 1 cup of coffee for the ice cubes.

Pour off 1 cup of the cooled coffee into an ice-cube tray (this will make approximately 12-14 “regular”-sized ice cubes depending on the size of your tray).  When frozen, pop out of the tray into a plastic bag & freeze till needed.

Meanwhile, refrigerate the remaining coffee (I use a dark-glass 1 litre brandy bottle, with a slim neck to minimize oxidation, saved especially for this purpose).  The chilled coffee will last 3 days before losing its freshness.

To prepare a sweetened version with milk: put 4-5 coffee ice cubes in a 10-oz glass, then fill 2/3 with refrigerated coffee, sweeten with either sugar, simple syrup or stevia (or other sweetener), and top up with milk.

To prepare without milk: Put 5-6 ice cubes in a 10-oz glass, then top up with chilled coffee and sweeten if desired.

Add a straw and there you go!  Iced Coffee Heaven!

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