With Summer now in full swing iced coffee and tea has been flying out of the cafés to regulars eager for their coffee fix while needing to keep cool in the Lancastrian Sun! Here's an update on a few of our favourite recipes for those interested in having a bash at home.

In the last few years, "cold brew coffee" has swept the nation's speciality cafés and has started to filter down to more high street chains as the method of choice for cold coffee. This involves a long extraction (up to 24 hours) in water at room temperature to get good flavour from the coffee. However, with the absence of heat, a lot more coffee is required to get a proper extraction and with exposure to air over this long time period oxidation can start to deteriorate the flavour of the coffee.

Instead, this year we are recommending the "iced coffee" method to get the best out of your single origin coffee when drinking it as a cold drink. This is essentially done by brewing filter coffee at a higher strength straight over ice, the ice making up around half the total brew weight. By brewing hot we find that a lot more acidity and sweetness, which is inherent at the first stage of extraction, carries through to the cup. This short, strong brew is diluted with ice to reduce bitter flavours that would otherwise be apparent from a normal brew ratio when coffee is cooled afterwards.

V60/Filter Cone with Decanter
18g Coffee (ground just finer than filter)
100ml Water
100g Ice

1. Fill Decanter with 100g of ice and place V60 with paper on top.
2. Add coffee to V60 and pour over 40g of water at 92°C, wetting all the coffee grounds.
3. Leave to bloom for 30 seconds.
4. Add remaining 60g of water and leave to drip through for another minute.
5. Give coffee a swirl to melt the remaining ice and decant into a fresh glass of ice to serve.

This recipe follows the same sort of principle as for coffee. In the cafés this year we are brewing each tea fresh to order to prevent batches getting old and losing flavour. This also gives us the opportunity to offer any of the teas we have for sale at that point in time. There are methods out there for cold brewing tea at a lower temperature but we have found that dosing high for a short time reduces overly bitter tannin flavours coming through.

1. Brew tea at twice the normal strength in a teapot (2 scoops per 100ml)
2. Decant into a jug filled with 100g of ice and stir down to melt ice.
3. Add half a shot of sugar syrup (or two teaspoons of sugar) and the juice of half a lemon.
4. Pour into a glass filled with ice and garnish with a slice of lemon.

One of the best teas to enjoy cold is our Blue Sky Tea, our summery take on Earl Grey Tea with an extra citrusy note of pink grapefruit. This year we're featuring it in our coffee and tea based cocktails at our Manchester cafe "Atkinsons at Mackie Mayor" as an adaptation of the classic summer cocktail the Mojito. This doesn't technically include an iced tea as a base which can sometimes taste watered down with the addition of ice and alcohol in a cocktail. Instead we infuse white rum with Blue Sky Tea overnight to get a more concentrated tea flavour into the drink.

1. Using a white rum of your choice (we use Bacardi) infuse with Blue Sky Tea at a ratio of 4 large scoops per bottle.
2. In a highball glass add 2 teaspoons of white sugar, 2 shots of tea infused rum, 10 mint leaves and half a lemon quartered.
3. Muddle ingredients in the glass.
4. Add some crushed ice and mix up ingredients with a spoon.
5. Top up with sparkling water and crushed ice and garnish with mint leaves.