Iced coffee

Cold coffee, with or without ice in it.

Recipe:

• Make coffee (French presses are fabulous)
• Pour it into something that won't break when you pour hot liquids into it
• Cover it and put it in the fridge
• Kill time 'till it's cold
• Pour into something to drink from
• Add sweetener if you want
• Drink and enjoy

Simple syrup is better than sugar as a sweetener for iced coffee (or anything else cold, like iced tea), since cold liquids do not disolve sugar very well.

While you can procure this tasty and refreshing beverage at practically any coffee shop, I have not been able to find any pre-packaged renditions that do not contain some sort of milky stuff and much sweetness. Oddly enough, $tarbucks does not sell iced coffee, at least not in my bit of the world. They will make you an iced Americano (espresso + water), but it's just not the same.

I ordinarily drink my coffee pure and simple - black, no sugar, none of that crap. But the taste of coffee changes radically when it's iced - whether this is due volatile oils evaporating as it sits or simply some result of our perception of taste, cold coffee tastes immensely bitter, and it loses much of the richness of flavor that it should have. As such, when I make iced coffee, I add various flavorings.

First the preparation of the coffee. I prefer it slightly strong, actually, as it seems that the 'coffee' taste is dulled by cooling. I also prefer a lighter roast - no matter how good that French roast or Viennese roast might be hot, the dark, bitter flavors are overwhelming in cold coffee. Also, don't bother with any fancy varietal coffees, as you'll lose all the subtle flavors in that Kona or Jamaican Blue Mountain.

Add quite a bit of cinnamon to the ground coffee - don't skimp, as the cinnamon's flavor doesn't come through terribly strongly. Add some cloves as well (they go wonderfully with coffee) but, since they seem to extract into water much more freely, go easy. Brew it, and while it's hot, pour it into a Thermos or whatever you intend to drink the coffee in. Add some sugar now (remember, cold coffee is bitter) - I add a sizable amount, but add until it tastes right. Stick that sucker in the fridge (if you put it in the Thermos, leave the top off. You're trying to cool the stuff down, remember?) and let it get ice cold. I'd also advise cleaning out the coffee pot quickly - while this stuff isn't as vile as 'flavored coffee' in terms of flavoring your coffee maker, you best play it safe when it comes to something as important as coffee.

This is good on hot days or when you need to take coffee somewhere that a hot drink might be inconvenient. It's just as caffeinaceous as real coffee (and thus much stronger than even the most highly caffeinated soft drinks) but it's also refreshing and the cinnamon and cloves help minimize the evolution of coffee breath. And it keeps for several days in the fridge, so I like to make several bottles at a time.

Surprisingly, iced coffee is obviously a beverage that has significant cultural variation. In Australia an iced coffee (or ice coffee, both are used) is a cold milky coffee drink served in a tall glass (often a milkshake glass).

In relation to coffee it's more like a caffe latte, as the liquid is primarily milk rather than water. Interestingly, iced coffee's popularity pre-dates the widespread drinking of caffe latte here by at least 20 years.

Ours is a lot more appealing than the (I presume) US version which is merely chilled coffee.

Recipe, Australian style:

• Put 1-2 scoops of vanilla ice cream into a tall glass.
• Make a shot (or double shot) of espresso coffee.
• Pour the shot over the ice cream, which will melt some of it.
• Fill the rest of the glass with milk.
• Add 2 ice cubes, stir.
• Optional toppings include whipped cream, and a dusting of cocoa powder.
• Drink with a straw, or from the glass if you want a milk mustache.

The ice cubes are necessary for sufficient cooling, due to the heat of the espresso. You can make it with chilled espresso coffee, but you'll have to either wait longer for the ice cream to melt or just eat the ice cream while it's solid. If you ask me it's not as nice that way.

If you really don't like sweet coffee you can omit the ice cream, in which case chilling the coffee first is essential.

In the mid 1990s (and possibly still), the Nestle company sold what were essentially cocktail shakers under the Nescafe instant coffee brand. The (bad) idea was that you could make iced coffee by simply adding all the ingredients into the device and shaking sufficiently. Even ignoring its inherent evil, it isn't easy to get instant coffee to dissolve in cold milk.

Australian flavored milk brand Big M has an "Ice Coffee" flavor, which has been available since the 1970s and is one of their 4 staple flavors (the others being Chocolate, Strawberry and Banana). Since it's marketed to kids, it does not contain any caffeine, rendering it essentially useless.