Why is Icedrop Coffee so expensive? How many hours does it take to make a pot of ice drops?

As the weather gets hotter and hotter, the premade coffee in the refrigerator on the front street has become the most popular style besides iced American coffee. Without too much introduction, everyone will directly say, "Boss, have a cup of ice drop!"

Some guests hesitate because they don't know what to drink, so they ask the barista: what's the difference between that ice drop and American style? Qianjie replied: one was made the day before, and the other is done now. The guest was even more confused. Finally, he silently chose iced American coffee because he thought it was cheaper.

In most cases, if a cafe sells ice droplets, it tends to be the more expensive of all categories, and sometimes it is more than ten or twenty more expensive than American style and latte. Why?

All iced coffee on the market can be roughly divided into two categories, one is the thermal extraction mode of brewing with high temperature hot water and cooling with ice, such as ice hand brewing and iced American coffee, and the other is direct contact with coffee powder with low temperature / normal temperature water. Ice droplets are one of the most widely used types of cold extraction that slowly release flavor substances.

As we all know, cold-soaked coffee is an extraction mode that is soaked for a long time and then filtered through the dregs. As long as you have a refrigerator and coffee powder (beans), you can easily make a cup of iced coffee by looking for a clean container with enough capacity and a material that can be filtered.

In contrast, the requirement of making ice drop coffee will be higher, it needs a special drip filtration device-ice drop kettle. There are many cool shapes of this kind of cooking utensils on the market, ranging from dozens of yuan to thousands of yuan. but the main structure generally does not leave three parts: the upper pot with a valve that can control the dripping speed of ice water, the filter cup for coffee powder, and the lower pot for coffee liquid.

With the help of this device, ice water falls into the filter drop by drop, reacts with coffee powder inside to extract soluble flavor substances, and then falls into the lower pot with gravity until the pot is filled with enough coffee liquid.

Since there is only low-temperature ice water from beginning to end, and the dripping rate is very slow (an average of 1-2 seconds per drop), it takes longer for more flavor substances to be released in order to obtain a moderate concentration. Coffee is not easy to release bitterness and other miscellaneous flavors.

The street used to make ice drops as an example, using a Tiamo HG2713 three-layer ice drop kettle. The front street is used to use the powder-to-liquid ratio of 1:10, that is, 60 grams of coffee powder extract 600ml coffee liquid, and the drip frequency of ice water is about 10.7: 8 drops. In addition, the mouth is sometimes blocked by cold, so we need to keep an eye on it all the time to adjust it at any time, so the whole process is usually maintained at 5 to 8 hours. The details depend on the amount of powder used and the speed of dripping.

In the whole production process of drip filtration, new cold water will constantly pass through the powder layer, and then filter to form a new coffee liquid. Compared with the static type of cold bubbles, ice droplets are dynamically brewed while being extracted and filtered at the same time. Ice water and coffee powder are not in full contact, so in taste, the ice drops of the same coffee bean will be cleaner and clearer than cold extraction.

The end of the drip does not mean that the coffee is finished, because it has to enter the next "low-temperature ripening" static stage, giving the coffee a unique fermented taste, which is often referred to as "ice".

The operation is very simple, put a sealed clean bottle in the refrigerator for more than 8 hours, until the end of the cold fermentation, we can add the right amount of ice to the espresso as we like. The reason for keeping coffee in the refrigerator overnight is to control fermentation and avoid spoilage.

It takes more than 10 hours to make a pot of 600ml espresso, which is why ice droplets are generally considered to be the longest of all production methods, which is why some coffee shops sell ice droplets by appointment. Of course, you can have ice-drop coffee in the front street without an appointment, but the taste is random. )

In order to highlight the mellow wine feeling of ice droplets and avoid the tail odor caused by long dripping, many coffee shops specially choose high-quality single beans full of fruit aroma. Therefore, compared with the conventional Italian bean formula, the raw material cost of ice drops will be relatively more expensive.

For example, when preparing ice drops in Qianjie, they like to give priority to beans that mainly show the flavor of flowers, fruit, fermented wine and so on. Under the blessing of slow dripping filtration and low temperature ripening, the ice droplets not only have the translucent flavor of sour coffee, but also permeate with a wine-like fermentation texture, mellow without losing freshness.

Last but not least, the price of ice drop coffee is generally higher because it uses more powder. For example, it takes 60 grams of coffee powder to make a pot of 600ml ice drop coffee on the front street, and a total of 3 cups (about 200 ml + ice cubes per cup) can be sold in the end, but 60 grams of coffee beans can make 4 cups of hand-brewed coffee (15 grams per cup) according to the custom of hand-brewing.

Of course, price is not the only measure of a cup of coffee. Qianjie has also seen extremely cost-effective ice drops at a low price, and it is also delicious, as long as baristas make it carefully and extract it in place, and the quality of beans is online. Pricing will depend more on the goal of the cafe.

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Front Street Cafe

No. 10 Baoqian street, Yandun road, Dongshankou, Yuexiu district, Guangzhou, Guangdong province