Cold coffee is a summer favorite around here, and many of us enjoy it even in the cooler months, but it can be hard to understand what separates a nitro cold brew from an iced latte. We're here to help! We'll break down the difference between the iced coffees and espressos and cold brews for you here!

Cold Brew

Cold brewing is a method by which coffee is actually brewed with cold or room temperature water. As you might already know the main variables when brewing coffee are grind size, water temperature, and brew time. It's pretty complex chemistry but you can boil it down (no pun intended) to water needing the appropriate time and nudge to bond with the coffee grounds and produce a tasty cup. Hot brew methods with varying brew times and pressure use finer grinds. Generally as pressure increases and brew times shorten, grind sizes get finer. Again, it's a lot more complex than that in practice, but we'll leave that explanation to another article. 

For our purposes today, this means that you can actually brew coffee with cooler/cold water if you use coarser grounds with more surface area and extend the brew time to 16-18 hours (or longer depending on the strength you want). Cold brewing is fun because while there are many fancy cold brew systems that bring lots of worthwhile convenience, you can also just add some coarse ground coffee to a mason jar with some fresh water on the counter or in the refrigerator overnight and strain it the next day with some cheese cloth or a very fine mesh filter. 

The resulting brew will be pretty strong depending on the ratios you use, so you may want to dilute it before serving. These flavors will be smoother and less acidic than you might get from a hotter brew method, but they are still bold and carry a lot of the coffee's flavor forward. The nice thing is that you can dilute a bit more with some extra water, and you can really get the flavor level you want with a cold brew method. You can also brew up enough concentrate to have on hand for a few days, concentrating the "work" of brewing early. 

Iced Coffee

Iced coffee is actually much easier to explain - it's just coffee brewed hot over ice! There are plenty of fancy ways to brew iced coffee, but on a basic level this brew method is just normal hot coffee brewed over a cup with some ice in it. Things to keep in mind with iced coffee are that without special programming or settings (many brewers have an iced coffee setting and instructions) you may want to use a bit of extra coffee against the added water from the ice cubes in your cup to maintain a proper brewing ratio. You'll also want to be careful with brewing hot coffee into glass containers that aren't designed for hot liquids. A mason jar might crack or break from that initial splash of hot coffee if it misses the ice!

Otherwise, iced coffee is a breeze, and this principal applies to espresso as well. You can even cold froth milk in many milk frothers to create your own cold froth iced lattes at home. You can also just add your hot shot of espresso to a cup with ice and milk/syrup for a quick and simple iced latte. 

Which Brew Method is Better?

As usual, the main answer to this question is really whichever one you like to make and drink more. There is a bit more nuance here, as a more traditional iced latte is going to work best with espresso and ice rather than cold brew due to the nature of espresso, and cold brew as a brew method tends to work best with complex coffees that have a lot of flavor. 

For more thoughts on this you can check out the video below! Let us know which method you prefer in the comments as well.