7 tips for making the best iced coffee

Iced coffee is one of my favourite ways of enjoying coffee in summer. Iced Coffee is very common drink on the continent, but not so much in the UK. Well, I think, it’s time to change that!

A lot of people think, that you need to have a specialist coffee making equipment to make something fancy like Iced Coffee, but the opposite is true! The most important thing is to use a great quality coffee to make sure your iced coffee has a robust and intense flavour. I’d recommend that you make your coffee the way you normally do, and then turn it into an iced coffee. Whether you have an espresso machine, coffee maker with hot water dispenser, or just use an instant coffee, you can make a delicious iced coffee drink perfect for the summer.

I always offer refreshments, when I run my baking courses and this week, I decided to prepare my version of Iced Coffee. I was right that nobody really wanted a hot drink anyway and my iced coffee was a bit of a welcomed novelty.

1. Start with fresh coffee beans

Great iced coffee was never made using stale beans so avoid buying your beans on sale. If you don’t drink iced coffee often, consider buying fresh beans at a coffee shop where you can buy only the amount you need for the occasion and grind your coffee beans at home.

2. Choose the right coffee for your taste

Hot coffee tastes different than cold coffee. So to get an idea of how your coffee will taste cold let a hot cup cool to room temperature. This little test will help you decide what tastes perfect to you.

3. Use fresh ice cubes

Ice has a tendency to get a stale if it sits in the freezer unused for too long. If you’re wondering whether your ice is helping of hurting your iced coffee, it’s easy to test: let a few cubes melt and come to room temperature, then taste the resulting water.

If it’s water you would want to drink by the glassful, you’re in good shape. If not, toss out the old ice and make fresh. If it still tastes stale, buy a bag of ice, the cost is worth the boost in flavor.

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4. Brew your coffee strong

Brew your coffee on the strong side as it will be weakened by the ice. To keep from diluting your drink, try turning your leftover coffee into ice cubes. Use these in the place of regular ice cubes to keep your drink chilled.

5. Try a cold brew coffee method

Some people object to acidity in their cold coffee. Cold brewing greatly reduces the acid content of coffee (with the same coffee it will lower the acidity one full pH point vs. hot brew). Put 3/4 cup ground coffee in a quart Mason jar, fill with water and stir.

Cap it and put in the refrigerator for 12 hours. Strain the resulting concentrate through a coffee filter to remove the grinds. Add water to taste when you’re ready to drink. You can even heat the reconstituted beverage for a quick, low-acid cup of hot coffee.

6. Don’t use burned coffee for your iced coffee

Saving leftover coffee for iced beverage is often fine, but don’t be tempted to use the dregs of a burnt pot. If it doesn’t taste good hot, it definitely won’t taste good cold.

7. Add extra flavour to your iced coffee

Adding fruits like strawberries, oranges, blueberries or even cherries and spices like nutmeg, cinnamon or cardamom are a great way to perk up your drink and your day.

The important thing is to have fun with it! Try lots of new things. Vary your usual routine. The worst that can happen is you won’t like it. You can always try something else!

If you’re short on time and don’t have a stash of reconstituted coffee available, try this recipe using instant coffee.

Vanilla Iced Coffee 2 teaspoons instant coffee 1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract 2 teaspoons cold water 1 1/4 cups milk Chocolate shavings (optional) Sugar (optional) Directions: Put the first 5 ingredients into a blender.

Pulse blend until the ingredients are smooth and frothy. Add the cold milk and pulse blend until all the ingredients are blended well. Pour of a few cubes of ice, add the chocolate and voila! If you desire, add the ice to the blender after the first five ingredients have been blended and crush the ice and then add the milk and mix.

So here what you need for this Easy Iced Coffee Recipe

• Your favourite coffee
• The best vanilla ice cream you can find
• Milk (if you prefer it to ice cream)
• Cinnamon (chocolate or similar delicious topping)
• Ice cubes (if you made very strong coffee or don’t have the time to wait around for it to cool down)

 And this is what you do:

• Make a strong coffee the way you normally do
• Leave it until it cools down
• Put in fridge until needed
• When chilled pour in tall glass add scoop of vanilla ice cream (or milk) and sprinkle with cinnamon
• Put your feet up and enjoy!

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Few extra tips to make your iced coffee quicker

There are ways of making your iced coffee a bit quicker, but they all require a bit of preparation. If you drink iced coffee regularly, it’s worth spending a bit of time (when you have the time), so that you can have your favourite coffee drink ready quicker when you want to.

Using ice cubes

Make sure you have plenty of ice cubes in the freezer. When you want your iced coffee, just prepare the hot coffee as normally, but add only about 1/3 of the water you would normally do.

This is so that you have a strong coffee base that you can dilute with the cold ice cubes. The quickest way to prepare your drink is to use a blender to crush the ice cubes and help them to melt quicker and to cooll down your coffee.

Using frozen coffee

This method needs a bit more planning, but essentially, you just need to make your coffee as you’d normally do, pour it to an ice cube tray and leave to cool down first and then freeze. 

If you make your coffee strong, you can save some space in the freezer (or if you don’t have that many ice cube trays), just remember that you’ll need to add cold water or more ice cubes to create the correct strenght of coffee when you want to drink it.

Now, it’s your turn! Let me know what’s your favourite iced coffee recipe – for now I’m sticking with my quick and simple Iced Coffee Recipe, but I’d love to know more versions of this deliciously refreshing summer drink!

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This blog post was originally written on 3 October 2020 and last updated on 27 December 2023