A long time guest to the site asked over Twitter how to beat the summer heat and still enjoy the great taste of coffee. It turns out coffee has been enjoyed cold for at least as long as World War II where soldiers in a hurry to get their coffee fix got used to cold coffee, and even developed a taste for it.
In North America, where steaming coffee suits the colder months, retailers introduced iced coffee as an experiment, validated by the popularity of iced tea. While off to a slow start, iced coffee is catching on in various forms, and the best part is that you can make it yourself at home. It’s this easy.
- Brew a half-pot of coffee to your regular strength.
- Once brewed, pour it into a container that can withstand the heat and temperature change, and put it directly in the fridge.
- Once cool, remove from the fridge and stir it to make sure coffee solids are fully dissolved and the coffee is a consistent strength and body throughout.
- Pour over ice. A standard half-pot should serve four people.
As far as the best coffees to use, coffee afficianadoes at Peets Coffee and Tea recommend coffees from Costa Rica or Kenya (make sure it’s AA auction lot). They also recommend Papua New Guinea coffee which is one of my absolute favorites so I mention it separate because for personal taste, I think this one has to be enjoyed hot. But don’t let me be biased and give it a try, you’ll just find it’s a little more difficult a coffee to find. They also recommend their own Ethiopian Fancy blend.
My preference is an iced mocha, and when I happen to be passing a Starbucks and don’t feel like a hot coffee, I order a mocha frappuccino. I take it without whipped cream so I can enjoy more coffee flavor and a few hundred less calories. One of these came in handy recently on a scorcher of a day walking in the blazing heat with no shade. The great espresso taste but blended with ice was the perfect drink, and even turned on a non-coffee-lover friend to it.
While on the Peets website, check out the new Iced Coffee Press that Bodum has designed. I have yet to use one, but apparently you put the coarse-ground coffee and cold water in the fridge overnight and press it in the morning for a smooth coffee over ice. I would have thought that long a time before pressing would overextract the coffee but without heat, I will take the word of the good people at Bodum that it doesn’t.
Let’s face it, fast food restaurants are not where you’d think to get good coffee. Even if I’m on the fly and don’t have time to make good coffee at home, I still wouldn’t stop at McDonald’s. While Starbucks emphasizes the cafe experience, they were very wise to include drive-through service at their locations because there is enough of us coffee-drinkers that need a cup on the move.
Earlier this year, Burger King announced a strategic partnership with Seattle’s Best Coffee (SBC). SBC is owned by Starbucks but is a brand that competes more with the likes of Dunkin Donuts than a higher-end cafe. Starbucks has pulled off selling their whole beans into grocery channels where it can still sell for a premium compared to the standard grocery store fare. But if the BK Lounge was selling Starbucks coffee, it could only hurt the coffee giant’s premium brand so a better play with the SBC brand.
I’m a chemist. I’m a senior, graduating this spring and moving on to grad school, hopefully, and I can tell you that storing coffee in any kind of plastic container is a bad idea because plastic is porous. While it might not let water in and out to the naked eye, at the molecular level, it does allow a very slow dissipation of atmospheric oxygen in and out. 
