A Cold Coffee Menu for Your Café: Cold Brew, Iced Coffee and Batch Sizes
24 September 20264 min read
Written by Tiny Tiger Coffee
It's 3 pm on a hot April afternoon. Your café is quiet, except that every second customer asks the same thing: "Do you have cold coffee?"
Your barista pulls a shot, waits for it, pours it over ice, and the ice melts into a thin, watery glass. Then a group of six orders six cold coffees, the queue grows, and no two glasses taste the same.
A good cold coffee menu fixes both problems. It is mostly about deciding what you make ahead and what you make to order.
Cold brew vs iced coffee: what's the difference?
They look alike in the glass, but they are made in opposite ways.
Cold brew is coffee steeped in cold water for many hours, then strained. It tastes smooth, round and low in sharp acidity. You make it a day ahead.
Iced coffee is coffee brewed hot, usually espresso, then cooled over ice. It tastes brighter and lighter. You make it in about 30 seconds, to order.
Which one should your café serve?
Most cafés do best with both:
Cold brew for speed. It is ready in the fridge, so a glass takes as long as pouring it. That's what keeps the queue moving at 3 pm.
Iced espresso drinks for choice. An iced latte or iced americano uses the coffee and grinder you already dial in every morning, and customers can change milk or sweetness.
How to batch cold brew for a café
This is our own recipe, scaled up for a café.
You'll need:Caramel Espresso or Toasted Almond whole beans, cold filtered water, a food-grade container with a lid, a sieve and a cloth or paper filter.
Step
What to do
Details
1
Grind coarse
Like coarse sea salt, on a grinder that can go that coarse. Your espresso grinder usually can't.
2
Mix 1 part coffee to 10 parts water
For example, 500 g of coffee to 5 litres of water. Stir until every bit of coffee is wet.
3
Steep in the fridge for 18 hours
At 1:10, give it the full 18 hours. Start it at 4 pm and it's ready when you open the next morning.
4
Strain twice
First through a sieve, then through a cloth or paper filter.
5
Bottle and chill
Write the date on every bottle.
The grounds hold back some water, so 1 kg of coffee in 10 litres gives you about 8 litres of concentrate, or about 80 glasses at 100 ml each.
We use our cold brew within about a week. Store it undiluted at the back of the fridge and taste it before each service. If it tastes flat or sour, pour it out.
Date every bottle, so the oldest goes out first.
Five cold coffees for your menu
A short menu is easier to make well. These five cover most customers. Each uses our espresso house recipe for the shots: 18 g of coffee in, 30 to 40 g out, in 27 to 30 seconds.
Drink
How to make it
Cold brew, black
100 ml cold brew, 100 ml cold water, over a glass full of ice
Cold brew with milk
100 ml cold brew, 100 to 150 ml cold full cream milk, over ice
Iced americano
A double shot over ice, topped with 120 ml cold water
Iced latte
A double shot over ice, topped with 150 ml cold full cream milk
Classic cold coffee
A double shot, 150 ml cold full cream milk, a handful of ice and sugar syrup, blended until frothy
Three tips help every one of them:
Fill the glass with ice first. More ice melts more slowly, so the drink stays strong.
Use sugar syrup, not sugar. Sugar won't dissolve in a cold drink. Mix equal weights of sugar and hot water, cool it and keep it in a squeeze bottle.
Use full cream milk. It gives cold drinks the creamy body customers expect. Our guide to the best milk for café coffee explains why.
The five cold coffees, side by side.
How much cold brew should you make?
Batch for two or three days at a time, so every glass is fresh and nothing is wasted.
Cold brew glasses a day
Coffee per 3-day batch
Water
10
400 g
4 litres
20
750 g
7.5 litres
40
1.5 kg
15 litres
Keep a tally for two weeks, then adjust. Summer weekends can double your cold orders, so make a bigger batch on Thursday, not on Saturday morning.
Put another way, a 5 kg café bag makes roughly 400 glasses of cold brew.
Which coffee works best cold?
Caramel Espresso: a sweet, rich cold brew with caramel and a hint of mango, lovely black.
Toasted Almond: made for milk-based drinks, so it shines in cold brew with milk and iced lattes.
Decaf Toasted Almond: for customers who want a cold coffee in the evening. Our decaf cold brew guide uses the same 1:10, 18-hour recipe.
To begin with, use one coffee for hot and cold espresso drinks, so you dial in only once each morning.
A common question
Can I use my espresso shots to make cold brew?
No. Cold brew needs coarse coffee steeped in cold water for 18 hours. Espresso over ice is iced coffee, a good drink, just a different one.
If you want to become a B2B partner of Tiny Tiger
Send us your café's model, city and expected cups a day on WhatsApp, and we'll suggest which coffees to use for your hot and cold menu. Café pricing starts from ₹1,200 a kilo, with a 5 kg minimum, and 5 kg café orders ship free to metro cities within 3 working days (about 5 days elsewhere). To taste first, you can order a paid Café Sampler and try it on your own machine. Start on the Café Program page.
