A common dilemma for anyone remotely interested in drinking cold coffee is choosing between cold brew vs iced coffee. The good news is that you’ve come to the right place to answer your queries.
Keep reading to learn more about their differences and how you can make the right choice.
How to Make Both?
So, the first question that arises is how to prepare both these drinks? Here’s how.
How to Make Cold Brew
To make a cold brew, all you need to do is steep course ground coffee in room temperature or cold water. Then keep it in the refrigerator and strain it after.
The filtered coffee concentrate is your cold brew. Then to make it into a drinkable beverage, this concentrate can be paired with either milk or water, depending on your preference.
You can add syrups or any other flavorings to take your cold brew to another level.
How to Make Iced Coffee
Iced coffee, on the other hand, is fairly simple to make.
All you need is a hot brewed coffee which can be an espresso or even instant coffee. Then, allow the coffee to cool down and serve over ice with either milk or water, again, based on your taste.
The issue with iced coffee is that it can often taste watered down. One way to deal with this can be to use coffee ice cubes. As in, you can freeze your coffee to later use in your iced coffee. This will prevent your coffee from diluting as the melting ice cubes will continue to give it strength.
Time Required for Cold Brew vs Iced Coffee
Now that we know how to make these two coffees, how long do they take?
Cold Brew
Cold-brew uses time to brew coffee rather than heat so takes longer. You should keep your concentrate in the refrigerator anywhere from 12 hours to 24 hours depending on how strong you want it to be.
Usually, cold brew is made in a bulk so this also means that you will be able to use it for days after it has been strained. Just remember to keep it refrigerated otherwise it will go bad.
Iced Coffee
You can prepare iced coffee in just a few minutes. All you have to do is make regular hot coffee and pour it over ice.
The downside is that you can only make it once because you can’t store it for later use.
Taste Differences
After all the effort, do these really taste all that different? The short answer is, yes.
However, continue reading to know more.
Cold Brew
Since cold brew uses cool water, the resulting coffee is smoother in taste. The water takes out the acidity which makes the coffee less bitter and slightly sweeter.
Moreover, since the coffee grounds are steeped for a long time, the concentrate is, well, quite concentrated. But you can adjust the water or milk ratio to find the perfect balance.
Iced Coffee
Iced coffee is pretty easy to make but that also means that it may not be the best tasting option out there.
It can taste slightly bitter, although that depends on the coffee beans you use. It can also taste watery or milky because it isn’t that concentrated.
But it is a light, refreshing and quick drink in the morning.
Final Verdict
You now know how to make both of them or you can just order both to see which one you like best.
Hopefully, with their descriptions, you have an idea of which one you would like better.
Tastes are extremely subjective so I won’t say which is the best one. But I will say this: if you are in a rush and need your caffeine fix, cold coffees can be your best friend!
