During beautiful balmy summer days cold brew coffee is a delicious and welcome refreshment. Cold brew coffee and iced coffee have taken the coffee market by storm and is the perfect change to your coffee routine for a chilled and refreshing beverage. Making cold brew coffee at home is simple, easy and doesn’t require any expensive equipment.
Here is our Redber Guide on the differences between cold brew and iced coffee and how to make the most delicious cold brew coffee for summer!
What Is Cold Brew Coffee?
Cold brew coffee doesn’t use hot water, which makes this even easier to create than your usual hot coffee. Not only that, but you don’t need ninja-like barista skills to make a refreshing cup of cold brew coffee. Cold brew is delicious and has a lighter and more elegant aroma, with a smoother, more rounded taste and is much less astringent than your hot cup of coffee. These sought after delicate flavours happen because the oils and acids that can cause unpalatable and bitter flavours are not soluble in cold water.
What Is Iced Coffee?
Iced coffee is a similar cold coffee beverage, but with a different brewing process. Iced coffee is your normal brewed hot coffee served on the rocks (over ice) or chilled. You brew it as you normally would, be it in a pour over, aeropress or espresso machine and then you can either chill it in the fridge for a few hours or immediately pour it over ice to create an instant refreshing drink! The main difference is that iced coffee tends to be more concentrated.
Hot VS cold brew coffee. Both are served cold, so why do they taste so different?
It all comes down to temperature during extraction. Iced coffee is brewed with hot water and then cooled, whereas cold brew is made using cold water only. The traditional hot water method produces a more bitter and generally more acidic cup. This is due to the compounds within ground coffee which produce these flavours being more soluble at higher temperatures, and are therefore more easily dissolved in hot rather than cold water extraction. In fact, cold brew can be up to 60% less acidic than standard iced coffee!
The lack of acidity and bitterness in cold brew accentuates other flavour notes, often resulting in a smoother, and slightly sweeter cup. Temperature not only influences flavour profile through extracting different substances but also the level of volatility. At a higher extraction temperature there is increased volatility and therefore loss of aromas and flavour to the environment, flavours that are retained in cold brewed coffee. Which you prefer is a matter of personal preference, and we’ve provided you with some helpful recipes to help find your favourite!
Shop our essentials for cold brew & iced coffee:
3. Cold Brew Coffee Bundle - Ethiopian Sidamo & Brandy VS Barrel Aged Guatemala Antigua £12.75
4. Duralex Picardie Clear Highball Glass Tumbler 50cl (6 Pack) £30
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