Why You Need A Cocktail Shaker For Perfect Iced Coffee

Is your morning cup of iced coffee tasting a little stale? Maybe it's time to shake things up, literally. Iced coffee is a delicious and refreshing treat, but pouring hot coffee over ice will inevitably lead to a watered-down cup of joe. And nobody wants that. But the solution to your watered-down coffee woes might just be found in your bar cart. A cocktail shaker is often used to mix cocktails and bring them to an icy cold temperature without watering them down. This benefit extends to your coffee as well.

For the perfect iced coffee, all you'll need to do is pour a cup of coffee (at room temperature) into a cocktail shaker along with ice. It's best not to pour steaming hot coffee into your cocktail shaker, as hot coffee can cause burns.  Once your coffee is poured, put the top of the shaker on tightly, and shake until the outside of the container is cold. Then, pour it into your glass. This trick will ensure that your coffee isn't watered down in the cooling process, and you won't have to wait for your coffee to cool down. If you use this method with a shot of espresso, then you've successfully made a shakerato, an Italian-style shaken espresso. However, you'll want to be careful about adjusting your brew when using this method, as your iced coffee will be much stronger than if you simply pour your coffee over ice. So, make sure to brew to your desired strength.

If you're hoping to make a superb cup of iced coffee, you can borrow more from your bar cart than just a cocktail shaker. It might be helpful to think of your coffee as a cocktail of sorts. Like cocktails, coffee is a complex beverage that requires balancing multiple flavors like bitterness, sweetness, and acidity. And, like cocktails, you can add certain ingredients that help to highlight the best aspects of your brew. Certain ingredients that are usually reserved for cocktails, such as bitters, can help bring out the best qualities of your coffee.

And you don't have to stop with bitters. Adding syrups to your coffee can also improve its flavor. Homemade lavender syrup, for example — which is often added to cocktails — can make a unique and floral addition to your drink. And even soda water, which adds fizz to many cocktails, can be an interesting pairing for your cup of iced coffee (shaken, not stirred). Adding carbonated water can even help to mellow out a particularly strong brew. You'll want to stick to a 1-to-1 ratio for this drink, so neither element overpowers the other. Plus, you'll get the refreshing bubbles of sparkling water with the rich flavor of coffee.

However, the trick of treating your iced coffee as you would a cocktail is not universally applicable advice. Sometimes, pulling out that cocktail shaker isn't always the best choice for a coffee beverage. Drinks such as iced Americanos, for example, need added water to dilute the espresso and mellow its flavor. Some brews of coffee benefit from the dilution that melted ice provides, just as some liquors improve with added water.

And, like with cocktails, the shape (and size) of your ice cube does matter. A large ice cube, for example, will melt more slowly than smaller cubes. Smaller cubes will melt rapidly, diluting your drink more quickly. Knowing which cube to use can help you achieve the best coffee experience, perfectly suited to your tastes. In this way, coffee and cocktails are a bit more similar than one might assume. Understanding one craft can help you to make the most out of both. And you can always turn that shaken iced coffee into an espresso martini cocktail if you want to merge the best of both worlds.