Iced coffee is good, if no one has told you yet. Its coffee, and its iced. Its good. At our Dancing Goats locations, Iced Coffee orders increase dramatically as the weather grows warm and by high summer we will be slinging so much coffee over ice it can give you a brain freeze just thinking about it.
There are a number of methods for brewing iced coffee, but if you are brewing it at home, one or two cups at a time, we recommend brewing hot coffee over ice while maintaining the correct water to coffee ratio. For this explanation we're using the Chemex, but any pour over coffee method for a basic cone filter or Hario will work. The key is the recipe. The proper coffee-to-water ratio for brewing coffee is two tablespoons of ground coffee for every six ounces of water, so a 12oz cup of coffee requires 4 tablespoons of grounds, etc. With iced coffee you will stick to this recipe, except half of your water needs to be ice.
Using the 12oz example above, six ounces of your water needs to be 200 degree water and six ounces needs to be ice cubes. Fortunately, a standard ice cube is about one ounce of water. You will use:
- 16oz glass or mug
- 6 ice cubes
- 6 oz. 200 degree water (a few seconds off boil)
- 4 tbsp ground Batdorf & Bronson Coffee
To brew 12 ounces of iced coffee, place six ice cubes into a mug. Then load four tablespoons of ground coffee into your cone filter and pour six ounces of 200 degree water over the grounds into your ice filled mug. When the brew has finished dripping you can compost the grounds and kick back with your delicious refreshing iced coffee.
But wait! You have friends, right? While we like to talk in tablespoons when we are doing single-serving brews the method above applies even if you're using your coffee-pot or any larger brewer. Simply reduce the amount of water you would normally pour into your brewer and replace it with ice cubes in the carafe you will brew into. With the warm weather on the way, and B&B iced coffee in your pot, you could easily become the most popular person on the block; or you could just keep all the chilly treasure to yourself (we wont tell, we promise)! Do you brew your iced coffee differently? Tell us about it in the comments below!