Japanese Iced Coffee How To

Summer’s here, and many of us coffee nerds gravitate towards cold coffee drinks, from iced americanos, espressos and lattes, to cold brew coffee and everything in between. The thing is, the roasted coffee bean is not something meant to be brewed with cold water (and we wrote an extensive article on why that is so, back in 2011). Because of this, cold coffee and espresso brews come with tradeoffs: they usually need some modifiers (like milk, or sugar, or both) to make them taste great to the vast majority of the population, and you never quite get the full flavour nuances a great coffee bean can provide when brewed the traditional way. And the traditional “cold coffee” brews take hours, if not days to brew.

So what if I told you there was one way to brew coffee cold, within minutes, that actually tastes good? That actually presents most of the flavours your precious coffee beans have up to offer?

Well, there is one method, and the guy who invented it called it the Japanese Iced Coffee Pour Over Method. That fellow was Peter Giuliano, who was the Director of Coffee at Counter Culture Coffee when he presented this method to the world almost 9 years ago (he’s now involved in the Specialty Coffee Association). He doesn’t take full credit for it though, as he stated he learned this method in Japan in the 1990s, and took to modifying it for North American use over the following 10 years.

We’ve been playing with Giuliano’s brewing method for years ourselves, and have subtly tweaked and improved it through a lot of trial and error. This is our take on the Japanese Iced Coffee brewing method, and our next How To in the Pour Over Event series on CoffeeGeek. Later on in the article, we’ll talk more about the development and theory behind why this brewing method works so well.

This How To is brought to you by the fine folks at Baratza, and  Bonavita. To demonstrate the Japanese Iced Coffee brewing method, we’re going to be using the fantastic

– Baratza’s Vario-W Grinder, which doses by weight;
– Bonavita’s excellent Graphite Interurban Variable Temperature Kettle;
– The Chemex 6 Cup Glass Handle Brewer;
– Able Brewing’s Kone Filter, for reasons we’ll detail later on in the article;
– Transcend Coffee’s spectacular Elmer Leyva Peru;
– The Acaia Pearl Scale (though any $10 scale will do!)

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Now let’s get to the How To!

Japanese Iced Coffee, Step by Step

Get Your Materials Ready You need a kettle, a grinder, a scale, coffee, brew, filter, ice cubes, and a stir stick.

Bring Kettle up to Boil If you’re using a temperature control kettle like we are, set it to 205F. If you’re using a stovetop kettle, heat it up to boil, and let it sit for 30 seconds before pouring.

Grind the Coffee Once the kettle is boiled, or maintaining at 205F, it’s time to grind coffee. We are using our gold standard ratio of 7g of coffee per 100ml brewed; this is a 500ml brew, so we’re grinding 35g of coffee. The grind fineness is our standard fine pour over level, which is similar to table salt in fineness. This is a bit finer than you usually do a Kone metal filter grind (see later on in article as to why we do this).

Place Glass Brewer on the Scale At this point, we’re going to start measuring weights, so add your Chemex to your scale.

Add Ice Directly to Your Glass Brewer The secret to good Japanese Iced Coffee is half of our “brewing” water is actually ice. So half our brewing volume — 250ml — of ice is added to the Chemex.

Add Filter and Pour Coffee At this point, add the Kone filter back to the Chemex, and pour in your 35g of coffee.

Start Bloom Pour Slowly pour double your coffee weight in hot water to the bed of coffee. We are using 35g of coffee in this example, so we’re pouring roughly 70g of 205F water in about 20 seconds.

Pause for 30 Seconds Pausing and letting the coffee fully saturate is crucial here, just like it is with all pour over methods.

Continue Brew Pour Continue slowly pouring your brewing water onto the coffee slurry in the filter. Aim for under 5g/second pouring time.

Pour Remaining Brew Water We’re doing a 500ml brew here, so you are pouring 250ml of hot water onto the coffee.

Let the Brew Finish, Remove Filter It’ll take about a minute or two for the brew to complete, as the hot coffee drips onto the ice in the vessel below. Once done, remove the filter.

Give a Few Stirs Using a stirring stick or spoon, gently stir the brewed coffee so it completely cools down and chills up. There should still be ice cubes in the brewer when you’re done.

Serve Straight Up! It’s a bit hard to get the ice cubes out of the Chemex brewer, so you might have to spoon one or two of them out. Optionally, you can pour it on ice, but that would dilute the drink even more.

Why is Japanese Iced Coffee Pour Over the Best Cold Brew Method?

I made a really bold statement at the start of this article, proclaiming this the best way to brew a cold cup of coffee. It almost rivals our Iced Espresso brewing method, for my tastebuds. So how can I say that?

Simple: this isn’t a cold brew method. It’s a modification of a traditional, hot brew method that you turn cold almost instantly. That’s where the real difference is. If you want the super long reasons why, I wrote a long, detailed article on temperatures and extraction methods for cold coffee almost 9 years ago (please give it a read if you have some time!).

The real secret to this brewing method is you’re doing all your extraction at the proper brewing temperatures, and drawing out all the best benefits that the coffee has to offer. Your trade off is it will most definitely be a weaker coffee, as you’re only running half the brewing water you normally would through the dose. Brewing with cold water — the way most “iced coffee” brewing methods use — do not come even close to extracting the kind of flavour bounty that a traditional hot brew does. That, in a nutshell, is why this brewing method is so good for your summer iced coffees.

What I especially like about this method is it’s literally the only one I don’t find the need to add a sweetener to. A sweetener definitely does help (again, read my long iced coffee article from 2011, linked above, as to why), but using this brew method with a naturally sweet coffee to begin with, and the cup on its own — black with the brewing ice cubes in the cup — is tasty enough to not require any modification.

The Japanese Iced Coffee brewing method is also incredibly fast. The more common iced and cold brew methods take literally hours to brew. This takes the same time as a traditional pour over brew, which makes it even better: all of a sudden you have an urge for an iced coffee, and this method delivers your cup in under 7 minutes.

How We Modified Peter Guiliano’s Japanese Iced Coffee Method

Before I even get into this, have a look at Guiliano’s original video for this brewing method:

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This was an eye opener for me, but I also had a lot of questions. My primary concern was dilution; if you’re only using half your total volume of water to brew the coffee (and the other half is ice cubes in the carafe that the coffee drips onto), you will most definitely end up with an under-extracted finished brew. So I started experimenting with the method and looking for ways to improve it.

The first thing I figured out (with the help of a lot of tastebuds coming through the CoffeeGeek Lab in 2011) was that I had to go slightly finer on the grind of coffee — not much at all — to increase the extraction potential of the brew, but to also slow down the brewing a bit. On the Baratza Vario-W grinder, I go one full macro click finer from my standard “Hario Pour Over Paper Filter Grind” (keeping in mind there’s still 5 or 6 macro clicks finer to get to espresso grind).

The second thing is, I found doing the usual bloom, pause, slow pour we all rely on for a standard pour over brew worked equally well here. We ran TDS tests on the resulting brew, and the combination of the finer grind and the slow, controlled pour gave us extraction rates of 15-18%, where 18% is generally seen as the low end of a “good” traditional pour over extraction rate.

The real improvement in this brewing method came when I switched from paper to metal for the filtering method. And specifically, the Able Brewing Kone, and specifically, the square to round circle 4th generation Kone. Why is that?

Brewing with paper filters, like those from Hario and other companies, results in what are called “clean” cups of coffee, but ones that don’t really extract all the flavours, oils, and lipids that can be extracted via water and Co2 from the ground coffee; the paper holds back most of those oils and lipids, which can really balance out the cup better, and improve the “oomph” of the brewed cup. Plus, I found that the instant chilling of the brewed coffee using the Japanese Iced Coffee method really accentuated and amplified the “paper” taste I always seem to taste subtly from a traditional Hario V60 brew, or a Melitta filter paper brew

Kone “Ups” the Japanese Iced Coffee Game The Kone really upped our Japanese Iced Coffee game overall. Other metal filters will have similar results.

Using the Kone filter on the other hand, there’s no paper flavour impact at all. And more importantly, all those oils, lipids, and other flavour nuances blocked by paper filters make it into the cup thanks to the metal filter of the Kone. This all results in a cup with a better extraction yield using the Japanese Iced Coffee method, and a fuller, more complete cup that has a sweet, subtle buttery finish that the paper filter brewing method doesn’t provide.

Even then, my early experiments with the Kone had issues. Being a Kone, I originally ground a bit coarser than I would with the paper filters, because the Kone can block up with too fine a grind. By the time Able Brewing had their Version 3 of the Kone out (some 6 or 7 years ago now), I did find I could use the same finer grind I did with paper filter brewing using this method, and get very satisfying results, although the brew did take longer.

The Version 4 of the Kone (the current version) really upped the game. The resulting cup is much cleaner (less sludge makes it through to the cup), but the fantastic square-to-round filter hole design of the V4 Kone meant I could use the finer grind, and get brewing times much closer to that of a paper filter (it still takes about 20% longer).

The real bottom line is this: Using a metal filter — especially the Able Brewing Kone with it’s well thought out design — and going for a finer grind and a attentive pour, pause, pour slow method, make this the best possible way to make iced coffee outside of the iced espresso realm. It may even be on par with what iced espresso can deliver (and for me with my heavy espresso bias, that’s saying something).

Doing this Method on the Cheap

So the parts of the Japanese Iced Coffee puzzle we covered in this article — the digital, variable temperature kettle, the expensive scale, the expensive Kone filter, the expensive Chemex, the expensive grinder, etc etc — can really add up. The good news is, this brewing method is so fantastic at what it does, it can also be done on the super cheap with results nearly as good as the expensive toys provide above. You are going to lose on some of the nuances of the extra flavour boosts the Kone filter provides, but it’s still going to be one of the best iced coffees you’ve ever had.

You can easily do this brewing method with the following things:

• a good budget grinder. Baratza’s entry level Encore Grinder ($150) is more than up to the task of this method. Seriously, get a good grinder!
• a stovetop gooseneck kettle (like Bonavita’s 1L Stovetop Kettle at $25 works great.
• a cheap gram scale. You don’t need 1/10th a gram for pour over coffee. Any $10 scale will do.
• A nice Melitta Pour Over set, like this $18 one with glass carafe.
• of course, good coffee. Look for coffees with good fruity and chocolate notes but not “bright”; a more balanced, light-medium roasts serves this brewing method well.

Follow most of the steps outlined above, but do a few extra hot-water rinses of the Melitta paper filter, and you’ll get a fantastic iced coffee as a result. Except for the grinder cost, this home setup only costs you about $50 – a bargain that sees double duty for normal, traditional pour over coffee as well as the Japanese Iced Coffee method, pioneered by Peter Guiliano, and updated a tad in this How To.

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This Japanese Iced Coffee How To is part of CoffeeGeek’s Pour Over Coffee Event, a series of articles and how tos, wrapping up with a Master Class on Pour Over Coffee. We’re also throwing in a contest, thanks to two amazing sponsors (Baratza and Bonavita) we have lined up.

For this How To, we used Bonavita’s excellent Interurban Variable Temperature Kettle, in graphite. Bonavita was the first company in North America with a full temperature control pour over kettle, and it remains an awesome choice for your home pour over needs today.

We used Baratza’s groundbreaking, ahead of its time Vario-W Grinder. which is the world’s first consumer grinder with a built in scale, and a home grinder capable of handling everything from espresso to press pot grinds. The amount of savings this grinder can provide in no coffee waste will probably pay for the grinder in about 5 years, something to think about!

See our other Guides and How Tos