Whoever came up with the idea to put coffee over ice is an unsung hero to caffeine addicts everywhere, who, as a result, can snag their coffee fixes on 100-degree days without chugging 100-degree beverages.
The only drawback, of course, is when the ice melts and that much-beloved morning treat becomes an unappetizing coffee-water hybrid. Here's a twist on the coffee ice cubes we reminded you to make earlier this summer: Joanne Choi from Week of Menus busted out her cubes and plopped them into a glass of milk.
Both clever and appetizing, each chilly caffeinated cube looks good enough to savor on its own -- a coffee Popsicle, if you will -- but, when lounging in a glass of ice-cold milk, they create a sort of inverse iced coffee. Genius.
Since Isiticedcoffeeweather.com has finally (finally!) started answering in the affirmative, I think it's time you and I get chilly up in here. Of the numerous ways to make delicious iced coffee, my favorite is the popular Japanese style introduced to me by my colleagues and widely praised among its devotees: It's easy, adaptable and instantly gratifying -- like a beachside hot dog.
There are several different tools you can use to whip up a batch of summer's precious caffeinated lifeblood, depending on how much iced joe you require: a large Chemex will do the trick for the recipe below, but a conecoffeedripper positioned over a pitcher or cup (as at right) is perfect for smaller outputs.
As we've noted, it's iced coffee time, folks. While we can all agree that the best version is that which is freshly brewed, sometimes you've got to make do with what can be grabbed out of the convenience store fridge. Starbucks' Frappuccino is a perennial favorite, and we're fans of their Doubleshot Energy Drink (especially the new Cinnamon Dulce flavor) when caffeine alone isn't quite enough.
Behold, however, a challenge to Starbucks supremacy from Pom Iced Coffee. Far from an unpleasant mix of joe and pomegranate juice (though it does feature a touch of the antioxidant-laced fruit extract), this is one smooth-blended iced coffee drink. The cafe au lait version is delightful, but it is the chocolate that may soon boast the title of best bottled iced coffee, with an addiction-inspiring taste reminiscent of a blend of Yoo-Hoo and chocolate Nestle Quik.
The only problem with this cooling nectar? It's only available at select stores and Whole Foods in the Northeast (though bottles have been spied at 99-cent stores on the west coast). If anything were to make a convenience store crawl or a trip to a pricey specialty grocer worth it, it is Pom Chocolate Iced Coffee. So stock up.
Note:Slashfood does not accept compensation of any sort in exchange for reviews.
You know how as a kid you used to stand peering out the door wondering whether or not to wear a coat, and then your mom would shout that yes, you definitely need to wear a coat, because it's brisk out there. But then you'd get outside and it was too hot, so you wrapped the coat around your waist where it was this hateful bulky thing and you wished you could have had some correct source of information that was not your mother.
Well, now we have the Internet, which is always right. Case in point: Is It Iced Coffee Weather? Demanding and capricious at once, it's an ether-mom for coffee-addicted adults. Yesterday we typed in our ZIP code and were relieved to see that yes, yes it is iced coffee weather! No more standing in the Dunkin' Donuts line like a fool, trying to figure it out! Today, however, the Web Site of Power says "no." But we want iced coffee! Who is in charge of this thing? There is no "about" button, and no contact info. Who are you, iced coffee diva?!
Is it iced coffee weather in Alaska? Chicago? Florida? Why not in 90210, whose Starbucks-slurping residents are surely enraged by that fact? We want an authoritative chart, but it's not like we're, uh, bloggers -- we can't sit around all day typing numbers into a Web site. So report back: Visit the site and for the love of all that is holy please take our poll and hit the comments to tell us the answer to this burning question.
These days, product placement (especially when it comes to food) is a fact of life. We all know that when one of our favorite television characters is holding a Coke or Pepsi product in an episode of their show, the company paid big bucks to get it there. Same goes for any mention of Kraft cheese, Cheerios cereal or Tropicana orange juice. We've come to expect this from scripted and reality TV shows (think about all the products on Big Brother or even Jon and Kate Plus Eight).
You'd like to think that the news is incorruptible, miles away from the allure of food companies offering pay for placement. Apparently, journalistic standards are a little looser in Las Vegas, where at Fox affiliate, KVVU, morning anchors now display plastic cups of McDonald's iced coffee on the podium, where a station-branded coffee mug used to sit. They hardly ever touch these cups, and the printed-on labels are angled for best viewing. The station readily admits that it's a sponsored promotion and defends the practice by saying that they cups don't come out until they start airing the lighter morning news at 7 a.m.
What do you think? Is it appropriate for food companies to get product placement on the news?
So I've done two days of cold brew coffee now, and I am here to say that I love the coffee it produces. It is so smooth and has a nearly-sweet taste. I grind up a full grinder of beans, trying to keep the grinding time as brief as possible (the finer the grind, the harder it is to strain out the grounds from the mix). I dump the grounds into a wide mouth quart jar and fill it up the rest of the way with filtered water (you could use straight tap water if yours tastes good). I stir to combine, put a lid on the jar (I use these nifty plastic ones as they are much more leak-proof than the metal canning ones) and let it sit overnight.
The next morning when I get up, I strain it through a regular sieve and then through a reusable gold mesh coffee filter. There's still a little bit of fine coffee grind at the bottom that I could get rid of if I used a paper filter, but it seems good enough to me without taking that extra step. It's definitely no worse than when you make coffee with a French Press. The only problem I've discovered with this method is that you don't get the smell of brewing coffee that comes when hot water meets ground coffee. The absence of that aroma makes me think that while I adore the taste of this coffee, I may not be a permanent convert. I like the ceremony and scent of making coffee almost as much as I like drinking it and this just doesn't give me that total coffee experience.
I started drinking coffee when I was a pre-teen (quite possibly the reason I never grew beyond 5'2") and over the last 16 years, I have tried just about every coffee brewing method available. I've had several French Presses (still a favorite when I'm making coffee just for myself), both cone and cup style filter machines, the Bialetti stovetop espresso pot and the classic Chemex pour through model (in addition to the plastic cone on the coffee cup set up). I also own a 50-cup party percolator that used to be my grandfather's and several pieces of an ancient aluminum stovetop percolator.
With all this coffee making power at my fingertips, I have never branched out into cold brew territory. However, I am becoming increasingly intrigued* by that particular style since reading this post by Leland over at Eat. He has been on a coffee journey similar to my own, and is loving the cold brew method for his summertime fix of iced coffee. There are a number of different ways to go about cold brewing coffee. He does his without any special equipment, but you can buy a kit to make the brewing process even easier.
*The process of writing this post made me so curious about making my own cold brewed coffee that I leaped off my couch and ran to the kitchen to whip up a batch. I put a full grinders worth of beans in the jar you see above, filled it the rest of the way up with water, gave it a bit of a stir and left it to do it's thing. I'll report back later on how it turned out.
I'm not a big coffee fan. Love the flavor, but it upsets my stomach. But I do have some iced coffee drinks during the summer, as long as there is some chocolate or mocha element in it. I like the Starbucks Frappuccino in the glass bottles (Mocha flavor), and I'm a fan of Nestle's Iced Java syrup.
This recipe has me a bit confused, though maybe it's just because I'm not a coffee guy. It's from allrecipes.com and it's a recipe for iced coffee. Do you really need a blender to make iced coffee? Or is this literally for iced coffee, a thicker drink, and not the cold coffee drink we're used to?
This may be an odd, naive question, but here goes.
For the past few years, I've been enjoying the Starbucks Mocha Frappuccino drinks that you can buy at the supermarket. They come in little bottles, in a four pack. I know that you can buy a Mocha Frappuccino at Starbucks locations, but when I order it it's a thicker, ice-based drink, and not the thin, iced-coffee drink that you get in the four pack from the supermarket. My question: can you actually order this drink at Starbucks, or can you only get the frozen one? Is this store Frappuccino a thin liquid because they can't market it as a frozen drink?
OK, sorry, I guess that was two questions, not one.
That's the claim by an anonymous Starbucks barista in a rant posted over at Jim Romenesko's Starbuck's Gossip Blog. It was originally posted on the Chicago Craigslist, but was removed.
While the barista really isn't saying anything new here, it's actually a good one-stop summary for everyone who doesn't like the coffee shop chain, and a funny, revealing rant for people who do like the chain. A few tidbits from the article after the jump!
Now that McDonald's is displaying proud banners throughout NYC that they have "iced coffee!" you can be sure that the once unusual and eccentric beverage is a trend that's exceeded its critical mass. Isn't Mickey D's the barometer of when trends reach the point where they become totally and forever uncool? In the last few years-in New York City at least-iced coffee was the domain of Starbucks and the assorted bagel shops, bakeries and internet/bookstore boutiques. The perfect blend of thirst quench and caffeine jolt, the iced coffee gives you a lift, then makes your tongue shrink up from dehydration as it pulls all the available moisture out of your body to assist in its chemical conversions within your body, but it does NOT make you all gaseous like soda pop might, so you can walk down the street, jaw set in grim determination, and suck that thing down and never make one illusion-of-togetherness shattering "noise."
Friday Playdate recently revealed what she really likes to do with her martini shaker in the hot months of the year. Sure she might prefer to shake herself a smooth, cool martini during the dog days, and children filled afternoons, of the summer. But she uses her shaker in a much more multi tasked manner. She shakes up a nice iced coffee in the noon hours.
By adding sugar, ice cubes, milk, cold coffee (either left over from the morning or chilled in the fridge) and a few bicep improving shakes, Friday is able to produce a caffeinated treat that doesn't run her the typical $6 tab at Starbuck's and that will help her endure the afternoon with the children. She also adds that by adding cinnamon or vanilla, or a flavor of your choice, the drink takes on that extra special bit of zing. Plus, after five o'clock the shaker can then be used for its original designated drink purposes.
Starbucks is scheduled
to launch a few additions to its line of prepackaged drinks. Working in conjunction with PepsiCo, which distributes
the Starbucks brand bottled Frappuccinos, the new drinks will include a lower-fat version of the popular Double-Shot
espresso drink, a strawberry Frappuccino and an iced coffee beverage. The iced coffee will be a sweet, milky drink sold
in 8-ounce cans. The Starbucks bottled Frappuccino sold over 434 million units last year and no doubt Starbucks hopes
that this new drink will draw on the popularity of its existing line, filling anticipated consumer demand for a sweet
coffee drink that is less rich than the Frappuccino.
As we've noted, it's 
I'm not a big coffee fan. Love the flavor, but it upsets my stomach. But I do have some iced coffee drinks during the summer, as long as there is some chocolate or mocha element in it. I like the Starbucks Frappuccino in the glass bottles (Mocha flavor), and I'm a fan of Nestle's Iced Java syrup.
This may be an odd, naive question, but here goes.
That's the claim by an anonymous Starbucks barista in a rant posted over at Jim Romenesko's 
Now that McDonald's is displaying proud banners throughout NYC that they have "iced coffee!" you can be sure that the once unusual and eccentric beverage is a trend that's exceeded its critical mass. Isn't Mickey D's the barometer of when trends reach the point where they become totally and forever uncool? In the last few years-in New York City at least-iced coffee was the domain of Starbucks and the assorted bagel shops, bakeries and internet/bookstore boutiques. The perfect blend of thirst quench and caffeine jolt, the iced coffee gives you a lift, then makes your tongue shrink up from dehydration as it pulls all the available moisture out of your body to assist in its chemical conversions within your body, but it does NOT make you all gaseous like soda pop might, so you can walk down the street, jaw set in grim determination, and suck that thing down and never make one illusion-of-togetherness shattering "noise."
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