Are ice brewing and cold extraction the same thing? How many categories are there in cold extract ice drop coffee?

Qianjie noticed that on the road of self-study coffee, what sometimes bothers people is not those complicated techniques or parameters, but when searching for a technical term, it always extends a lot of related words that look alike, but different related words in Chinese semantics, which is confusing.

For example, cold coffee, which has dominated the whole summer, will pop up several "aliases" as long as it is searched on the Internet, including ice droplets, ice brews, cold bubbles, Dutch coffee and Kyoto coffee. It will happen for a while, and it's really hard to tell who is who.

Among them, ice-brewed coffee is undoubtedly the most vaguely defined concept. Some people think that ice-brewing is a cold bubble, some think that ice-brewing should refer to ice droplets, while others understand it as the practice of soaking coffee powder in a mixture of ice and water. Don't worry, let's start with the big category of cold coffee.

As we all know, the word "cold coffee" comes from the literal translation of "Cold brew coffee", and its popularity has benefited from Starbucks' expansion and marketing. When you extend the name appropriately, you will find that all black coffee extracted with cold (water) can be classified as "cold extracted coffee". In other words, no matter soaking, dripping, or injecting, as long as the liquid is obtained by using low-temperature cold water to contact coffee powder, it is theoretically regarded as the category of cold-extracted coffee.

However, since there has long been the concept of cold extracted tea in Chinese, in most cases, what people call "cold extracted coffee" refers to coffee soaked in cold water for a long time, that is, cold-soaked coffee. The common practice is to soak the coffee powder in normal temperature water, put it in the refrigerator for a few hours, and then isolate the coffee grounds.

As a typical immersion extraction, the production of cold-soaked coffee is simple and convenient, there are many types of coffee beans, and the rollover rate is still low, so it is not only a "resident player" in coffee shops, but also one of the popular styles of home-made coffee list.

Another common kind of low-temperature extraction is trickling filtration, which is a long-time extraction process by controlling the melting ice-water mixture to infiltrate into the coffee powder for a long time. In many English textbooks, ice droplets are not usually called "Ice Drip Coffee", but Dutch Coffee, so they are often translated as "Dutch coffee".

It is rumored that around the 17th century, Dutch sailors tried to soak coffee powder in cold water during a long voyage at sea and found that the coffee made in this way was not bitter and easy to store and transport for a long time. Later, the Dutch introduced this cold drink to Japan in the Edo era, and it was so popular that it was named Dutch Coffee (Dutch Coffee).

Although it is difficult to determine whether the above story is true, it is certain that the cool drip filter designed with a multi-storey structure in coffee shops was invented by the Japanese, and the ice drop coffee made with it is also popular from Japan.

Hana Fusa

In the 1850s, the owner of a Kyoto company called Hana Fusa Coffee stumbled upon this cold extraction process, so together with several chemistry students developed a three-layer structure, a high-tower ice drip kettle with a valve to extract coffee powder by slow and uniform drip filtration with low-temperature cold water. At that time, the device was also praised as one of the most artistic coffee brewing processes.

Later, with HARIO, KINTO, Kalita and other well-known Japanese appliance brands successively developed and appeared in the familiar cold extraction bottle and ice drop kettle, this kind of black coffee extracted at low temperature is widely spread throughout Japan. Until the rise of the third wave of coffee, this cool-looking coffee device began to be introduced into Europe, so it was also known as Kyoto Coffee (Kyoto Coffee) by Westerners.

Compared with cold extraction and ice droplets, the word "ice brew" seldom appears in domestic cafes, and no specific origin can be found in Qianjie, and people have different interpretations of it. With regard to iced coffee, we can understand it as an elegant translation of "Cold Brew", which is almost equal to the meaning of cold coffee.

From the point of view of Qianjie, ice-brewed coffee mainly highlights the word "brew", which originally means making wine, brewing, and related to wine. In our coffee process, whether ice droplets or cold bubbles are made, they all need to be sealed into the pot for brewing, and after several hours or one or two days of ripening, the soluble flavor substances are further integrated with water, gradually evolving into a wine-like fermented taste.

Therefore, whether it is ice droplets or cold soaks, as long as the black coffee is obtained after the storage and brewing process, Qianjie believes that it can be understood as "ice-brewed coffee."

-END-

Front Street Cafe

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