Iced Coffee: How to Make Cold Brew Fast

We're big fans of cold brew, but unless you have time for the super-slow extraction of the coffee, you won't get the wide range of flavours that can be teased out by this brew method. Cold brew is on the menu at Arch51 - it's really popular and tastes fantastic, but the brewing process takes over 12 hours and is quite labour intensive.  Iced Coffee is a great alternative; Method and tips below.

Iced Coffee // How to make cold brew fast! 

With the Iced Coffee Method, we're brewing with hot water, so we can quickly dissolve the desired flavours and aromatics in our ground coffee. We can extract the range of interesting flavours that coffee can produce - without having to wait for hours. The coffee cools as soon as it hits the ice and this rapid cooling locks in those flavours.

• Choose your Brew Method. We prefer the clarity of a V60, but this recipe works with an Aeropress too. 

• Use 70g coffee per litre of water; a slightly higher ratio to compensate for the dilution of serving on ice.

• Finer grind. Because we're trying to dissolve the same amount of coffee as we would when brewing hot coffee, but with only 2/3 the amount of water the grinds need to be finer in order to dissolve the same amount but with less water. 

• 60/40 ratio of hot water to ice. For example, if you’re making a 250ml brew, your recipe will be 17.5g of coffee, 150g of hot water and 100g of ice. For best results, use filtered water with a low mineral content.

• Place your ice into the container you’re going to brew into, then brew your coffee normally using the hot water. The coffee will drip onto the ice, chilling and then diluting it to the correct drinking strength.

• Once all of the hot water has drained, stir the brewed coffee to ensure the ice has melted. Serve on ice, with a dash of milk or a slice of orange!