Summer is nearly year-round in southeast Texas so it should be no surprise that the free stuff to see and do in the sprawling metropolitan area of the nation’s fourth-biggest city focuses on the outdoors.The first step in making a great cup of iced coffee isn’t to fill your glass with Joe. It’s to fill it with ice, all the way to the rim.
“The more ice, the less water in your drink,” says Giorgio Milos, the New York-based North American barista-in-residence for Italian coffee brand Illy. “If you just put coffee in a cup with two ice cubes, the cubes dissolve immediately. But put coffee in a cup with 10 of them, and it chills down faster.”
Experts agree: The more concentrated your initial brew, the better. And sometimes, in a steamy summer, a jolt of cold Joe can make life a little more tolerable.
Besides providing a caffeine fix, chilled java opens the door to different flavors, brewing methods and serving styles. At times, iced coffee even blurs the line between drink and dessert.
“Some coffees will just taste better than others iced,” says Miguel Cervoni, a barista at Peregrine Espresso in Washington. “A lighter-bodied coffee is awesome iced. And the cool factor definitely helps when the heat index is about 100. It’s immediately consumable, whereas sometimes hot coffee might be too hot.”
There are a variety of ways to pour a better iced brew. If you have a regular filter machine, prepare a pot that’s twice as strong as you’d normally make for a hot drink. Then, go heavy on the ice, since some of it will melt and dilute the coffee.
Milos mixes both hot and cold ingredients together in a cocktail shaker first, then strains the liquid into an ice-filled glass.
“The best iced coffee is made by shaking a double espresso with a lot of ice and maybe a little simple syrup,” he says. Concentrated coffees – like those prepared using a French press, stove-top Moka pot or an espresso machine – are ideal, he says.
Other, less conventional methods are worth experimenting with, too. Milos likes the surprisingly simple cold-brew technique: Load a French press with coffee grinds, add cold water, and leave it overnight for at least 12 hours. In the morning, filter and pour.
“It’s a different coffee,” Milos says. “It’s not acidic, but it’s sweet and bitter.”
