Drinks · Global
Iced Coffee
Brewed hot straight onto ice, so it's cold, strong and never watery.
- Hands-on
- 10 min
- Total
- 10 min
- Makes
- 1 large glass
- Serves
- 1
About 5 minutes to boil the kettle and let it rest, 3 to 3 1/2 minutes of brewing, and it's ready to drink.
- easy
- vegan
- vegetarian
- gluten-free
- summer
- coffee
- quick
Verified against at least two trusted test kitchens or food-safety guides · Last checked · What this means
Scaling? Keep the same proportions: about a third of the brewing water is replaced with ice. A bigger batch takes longer to pour through, so grind a little coarser if it runs much past 4 minutes. Some items (like eggs) don’t halve neatly: beat them, then measure out half.
Ingredients
You need: pour-over dripper and paper filter · carafe or heatproof jug · kitchen scale · kettle (gooseneck is easiest) · coffee grinder (or pre-ground coffee) · tall glass
Contains: none of the 9 major allergens in the listed ingredients
Method
Boil and rest the water
Bring a kettle of water to the boil, switch it off and let it rest about 1 minute so it settles to around 93°C (200°F).
Ready when: The kettle has boiled and clicked off, then rested about a minute; a thermometer reads roughly 90-96°C (195-205°F).
Rinse the filter
Set the dripper with its paper filter over the sink or an empty cup, pour a little hot water through to rinse it, and throw that water away.
Ice in, coffee in
Put 135 g (4.8 oz) ice in the carafe and set the dripper on top. Add the 30 g (1.06 oz) ground coffee to the filter.
Bloom
Put the carafe on the scale and zero it. Pour about 60 g of the hot water evenly over the grounds to wet them all, and wait 30 to 45 seconds.
Ready when: The grounds puff up and bubble, then settle.
Pour slowly
Pour the rest of the hot water slowly in small circles until the scale shows 365 g (12.9 oz) of water in total (the ice was zeroed out). The whole brew should take about 3 to 3 1/2 minutes.
Ready when: The water has dripped through and the bed of grounds looks flat; most of the ice in the carafe has melted into the coffee.
Serve straight away
Swirl the carafe, pour over a glass of fresh ice, and add milk, cream or sweetener if you like.
Swaps
- Instead of pour-over and scale (no-gear method): brew coffee in your usual machine with half the water you'd normally use, straight into a jug filled to the top with ice; when it's cool, pour it into a fresh glass of ice
- Instead of regular ice cubes in the glass: coffee ice cubes (leftover coffee frozen in an ice tray), so melting doesn't water the drink down
Make ahead, store & reheat
- Make ahead
- This method is best drunk right away. If you want coffee waiting in the fridge, brew it up to 12 hours ahead, cool it and pour over ice later, or make cold brew instead; hot coffee kept for hours tastes flatter.
If something goes wrong
- Watery iced coffee Why: Normal-strength coffee poured over ice, or the ice melted into it.
Brew strong (replace about a third of the water with ice, as here) and use coffee ice cubes in the glass. - Bitter or sour taste Why: Grind too fine (bitter) or too coarse (sour, thin).
Bitter: grind a little coarser. Sour or flat: grind a little finer.
Good to know
- Beans taste best within a few weeks of their roast date.
Safety
- Just-boiled water and the hot dripper can scald. Pour slowly with the carafe on a steady surface, and kids should leave the kettle to an adult.
- Coffee contains caffeine. If you add milk or cream, it then contains milk.