Home Brewed Iced Coffee

So Summer is here, whether we like it or not.  I love Spring and Summer but I don't love the sometimes extreme heat that comes with it.  Now I know our 80s and 90s are nothing to my southern friends except for they are.  In NYC, most normal apartments don't have central air.  We have one window unit in the living room but thats it.  This week we have had consistent upper 80/lower 90 days.  Which has meant hot hot apartment.  I think I even developed a heat rash due to it.

One way that we hide from the heat is making Iced Coffee instead of brewing our standard hot coffee in the morning.  I found the recipe from Pioneer Woman.  I had to adapt it to smaller quantities.  We also have storage and space issues in NYC. Not all of us can live on a ranch ;)

I thought I'd spread the love of this amazing iced coffee recipe.  We brew it in a 2 quart plastic canister.

What you need is about 1/2 to 3/4 cup of ground coffee for 8 cups of water.  You want to make it stronger than normal hot brewed coffee in order to accomodate for the ice you will likely add to it later.  So for us we put 2 1/2 cups of ground coffee in the canister with 20 cups of water.  Stir the coffee water and then let sit covered for 6-8 hours.  I usually put mine next to the window.  If you prepare it in the morning, you'll be ready to strain it in the evening.

Next you want to strain the coffee.  You'll need a fine mesh strainer and paper towels.  You can use coffee filters but they tend to be a little too thick and make the process 2-3 times longer.  Place the strainer onto your next container. We use a spouted drink dispenser.  $5 at target.  Stir the coffee first before straining. This way it won't clog up your first paper towel.  Place a paper towel in the strainer and then pour the coffee very slowly into the strainer.  You'll pour the coffee about 1-2 cups at a time, depending on the container it is going into and your strainer size.  This can be a somewhat long process. If you tend to be on the impatient side, you'll want to find something to occupy your time with... like (SINGLEDOU[B]T Blog).  You'll have to change out the paper towel every few strains.  Once the paper towel starts to take too much time, thats a good time to change it out.  When you get to the bottom of the mixture, you'll have mostly grounds.  You can strain the mud like mixture but its probably not worth the time and mess.  Its totally up to you.

Once fully strained, you are ready to go.  Place the container in the fridge to let it chill and then you are ready for an insanely good cup of iced coffee.  You can freeze some of the coffee in your ice tray so that you don't water down your coffee. It all depends on how you like your coffee.  A batch this size lasts us 2-3 days.  But that's because we are somewhat obsessed.  If you are a 1-2 cup of coffee person then this might last you a little bit longer.

Also, we like ours flavored so I usually will mix in about .5 cups of flavored grounds into a batch of normal Folgers coffee.  You can play around with what you like.

ENJOY!