Japanese Iced Coffee My Recipe

With this method, I found that my coffee still got its beans’ flavor and characteristic even after diluted on the ice.

From Unsplash — by Wade Austin Ellis

This is the most consistent recipe from my experiment with the Japanese Iced Coffee style. I often found myself brewing a weak and tasteless iced coffee. My coffee concentrate is not strong enough when hits the ice. So the flavor is not strong and good enough after it’s diluted with the iced water. Weak bad taste. Often under-extracted-like taste.

How do I overcome this weak flavor?

• I use 97 degrees Celcius hot water, or hotter
• I use the Kubomi technique to prepare the coffee bed before blooming
• I use medium grind size — a little bit finer grind than regular hot V60 brewing

This method is just a 1:15 V60 brew but 50% of the water will be ice.

Also, I use the Kubomi technique to prepare my coffee on the dripper. Kubomi technique, in a nutshell, is a preparation step on the coffee bed before the blooming phase where you create a more surface area of contact between coffee and water in the bloom phase.

Ingredients and tools:

• 20gr of your bean of choice — grind at medium, a little bit finer than my regular grind for hot V60 brewing
• 300gr of water
  150gr of hot water to create your 1:7.5 concentrate — 97 degree Celcius, the hotter the better. 150gr of ice (50gr of BIG ice cubes, 100gr, or more, of small ice cubes for serving)

💡 Tips: I recommend using ONE BIG block of 50gr of an ice cube on your decanter and a small ice cube on your serving glass. Big ice cubes will melt slowly as it has less surface area in contact with hot water.

A few small ice cubes, although 50gr in total, will melt faster because of the surface area. Those BIG ice cubes will control the coffee liquid temperature stay cool until you finish the brew.

So your coffee liquid in the decanter has a low enough temperature that it won’t dilute the small ice cubes in the serving glass soon enough.

You will probably need more ice at the end after first tasting if your brew is still too strong

• V60 dripper and paper filter
• Decanter — to hold 200gr of water at a minimum
• Serving glass
• Scale and timer

Intermezzo~

Currently, I used Cleo water without any water additive. Read about water on my post below 👇

Water really affects your coffee taste

Step:

1. Rinse your paper filter with hot water in the sink. You don’t want to rinse it on your Decanter like regular hot brewing. We need to make the decanter as cold as possible to prevent the ice from melting early.
2. Fill your decanter with 50gr of ice. You will drip your hot liquid directly into the ice on the decanter. As it touches the ice your brew liquid will be cooled down immediately.
3. Prepare your coffee bed in the dripper with the Kubomi technique. I use a plastic chopstick to do it. Kubomi method will make a larger surface area of coffee in contact with the water. On the bloom phase, more contact area means more wet bed and it means more bloom extraction.
   Watch Sprometheus video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd7O_ET0aqE
4. Bloom with 50gr of water in 10 seconds. Wait until 30 seconds elapsed. Total brewing time: 30 seconds
5. Pour the next 50gr of water in 10 seconds. Wait for another 30 seconds elapsed. Total brewing time: 1 minute
6. Pour the last 50gr of water in 10 seconds. Wait until all water is drawn. Total brewing time: 1 minute 30 seconds
7. Just finished brewing. Swirl your decanter to dissolve some of the ice and cool down the temperature. Your BIG 50gr ice cube most probably is not melting all the way when the brewing finished. You will have, probably, 170–180gr of liquid**.
8. Prepare your serving glass and fill it with 100gr of small ice cubes Start with 100gr of ice cubes only. If it still too strong you can add more ice later.
9. Pour your coffee liquid from the decanter into the serving glass. Taste it.
10. Add more ice if you think it’s still too strong.

**Intermezzo~ Wait, should it be 200gr? Probably no. When you pour your 150gr hot water, your coffee and filter absorb some of the water. On immersion brewing method, like a cold brew of french press, your coffee beans even absorb 2x its weight. 20gr coffee in the french press will absorb 40gr water in the brewing process

End.

This is my most successful method of brewing Japanese iced coffee. Let me know your thought after you try this recipe.

Originally posted on my Notion https://www.notion.so/jundialwan/Japanese-Iced-Coffee-2df81a242fda4eb5aed826a44251fbae