Hot vs Iced vs Cold Brew Coffee

Transcript

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Welcome to the Throttle and Roast Podcast. In today's episode, we discuss hot versus iced coffee versus cold brew. Is one better than the other? Which brew is best for summer With ever more coffee based drinks becoming available? It can be hard to know all the variations out there if we think of regular coffees rather than an espresso based drink. There are three main variations The hot coffee is what has been around for millennia. It's served hot after being brewed while hot and the extraction from the beans is aided by the heat. So brew times are often measured in minutes. Now, many flavors pop from the rapid extraction, including acidity, sweetness and some chocolate notes. Iced coffee is comparatively recent, having been popularized in the United States in 1920. Though appearing in menus and recipes in the late 19th century, historians believe it started in 1840 in Algeria by the French military. What began as a practical solution to a supply issue of running out of milk, the army added water to the coffee and drank it cold due to the severe heat they experienced during the Battle of Mazagran. Now the simplest recipe is to take regular hot brewed coffee, but add ice before serving it. As the additional water from the melting ice will alter the ratio of beans to water. It's not unusual to brew it with a higher ratio than normal or to brew for longer to make the coffee stronger. Older recipes called for waiting for the coffee to naturally cool, but given that the heat would continue the natural chemical reactions it would often make for bitter flavors. So flash freezing is the most common today. Cold brew is the most recent to become popular in the United States, really coming into its stride in the past decade. But it's believed that its origin dates back to 1600 in Kyoto, Japan.

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Unlike hot and iced coffee, cold brew is brewed with cold water, not nearly boiling water as we use for hot brews. This avoids the chemical reactions that a hot brew accelerates as a result.

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Brew time is measured in hours, not minutes. It's not unusual to brew for 12 hours at room temperature to get the best results. And if you're putting your cold brew in the refrigerator, brew times often increase to 24 hours or more.

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The brew ratio is also typically stronger than hot coffee because you don't need to balance it quite as much as you would with hot coffee. Summer is in full swing now in the northern hemisphere. As I'm recording this, it's been in the nineties the whole week with high humidity where I am in the northeastern United States. But the heat has been more widespread with recent heat domes across the entire United States and the record high temperatures that arrive with them. So coffee lovers are probably leaning more toward iced coffees than their normal hot coffee. And if you find yourself in a Starbucks, most baristas will assume you wanted your drink iced during the summer months. So you'd need to specify if you want it hot. Now, hot coffee isn't off the menu during hot weather. Some will argue that a hot beverage makes you feel cooler because the air temperature feels much lower than the coffee. I'm not sure I can buy that, but I do enjoy the flavor of hot coffee, even in summer. Cold brew also tends to be more popular in summer months than colder months. Many are even available, bottled or canned in advance, so they become more like a carbonated soft drink. Now, could these replace a cooler full of beers or soda at summer barbecues? In fact, cold coffee sales have been climbing dramatically in the U.S. and not just in the warmer months. Some surveys are finding nearly a quarter of all consumers drink iced coffee on a daily basis. Much of that is probably driven by Starbucks, who reports that 75% of their beverage sales being cold in the third quarter of 2023. There might even be an age divide as 37% of consumers under 35 drink iced coffee daily now. For me, I've always been a fan of hot coffee. It's the way that I started and are properly prepared. It can actually be a wonderful, wonderful experience.

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I've actually not been a big fan of cold or iced coffee because I found more often than not, it was just done in a simplistic way where they brewed it as a normal hot coffee and then just threw in ice. So it just became diluted and was coffee flavored water rather than coffee.

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This has been my experience with it, so I've never been a big fan of iced coffee, But Cold Brew has been something that is, you know, I was exposed to it more recently in terms of of drinking coffee. It was remarkable to me because this has an outstanding flavor that's naturally balanced.

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It has less acidity and bitterness than normal hot coffee would. And as a result, even with the same beans, the brew method of a hot brew method versus cold brew method, you can actually have whole different flavor profiles pop out of it.

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In fact, given it's so hot today, I actually have my cold brew coffee sitting next to me. So it is one of these amazingly, amazingly delicious and flavorful coffees that even with the same beans, you can get this.

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So I've really, really been enjoying it. And I have to admit, I've always been more of a hot coffee drinker. So this is a little bit of a change for me of really becoming such a cold brew fan. It's become such a wonderful experience for me that I actually ended up buying a home brewer to use at home, and I've been using it more often than normal. Usually, I typically do pour overs in the mornings and the cold brew has become a little bit of a favorite for me. I might even end up using it in the cooler.

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Weather will have to find out in a future episode. But I will say that there is a little bit of a distinction here that makes the instant gratification a little bit more challenging with a cold brew versus a hot brew with the cold brew. I have to plan in advance that I want to have a cold brew in there because I've got to brew it for 12 to 24 hours in advance of when I'd actually drink it. Whereas if I'm going to do a hot coffee, I can decide I want to do that 5 minutes before I'm sipping it.

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So it's a very different experience in terms of the wanting to do this, at least from a home brewing perspective.

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Obviously, if you're going out to a coffee shop or if you're getting one of those bottled or canned cold beers, you can go and get it in any time. And most coffee shops, certainly in the summer months, usually have some cold brew ready to go. So it's not something that you're having to wait a long time for. But when you think of it from a home brewing experience, I think this is where it actually becomes a much, much different thing that you need to concern yourself with. I think when we we think of this hot versus iced versus cold brew coffee, it's it's an amazing experience in terms of just the different way that you brewed it. Just the temperature of the water with the same exact beans can actually have a radical difference in terms of the flavor. And I noticed this just with I have a cold brew sitting here right in front of me, the same beans I made yesterday with a hot brew in a pour over. And these seem being some doing today in a cold brew and the flavor is much smoother.

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There's no acidity, there's no bitterness into it. It's it's just this very sweet, chocolatey flavor that just immediately comes in and you love it. If I'm making a, you know, a hot brew, I can actually do a single cup of coffee. So there's an advantage of I can just, you know, throw in, do a pour over or an aeropress and just make something very quickly for myself. Or if I want to make something for my wife, I might do a full pot and or mocha master. And that's something that we can then have the cold brew, at least the with the one that I have, I have one by Oxo is I can make and it comes in.

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It makes it fairly highly concentrated, but it can be something that both of us can actually enjoy for throughout the day, if not even a couple of days, because there's such a high concentration of it. Which technique do you prefer to use?

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Are you a hot coffee drinker only or you know, is it that you change it based upon the season?

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Do you switch to ice coffee or cold brew in the summer months?

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And have you tried cold brewing at home? Text the show through the link in the show notes and I'll share your feedback in a future episode. Again, thank you so much for listening to the Throttle on Roast Podcast. If you enjoy what you hear, please leave a review and Apple Podcasts podcast or your favorite podcast Listening app.

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We'll see you soon.

Hot vs Iced vs Cold Brew Coffee

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