Thursday, June 28, 2012

Easy Iced Coffee


I have a bit of an iced coffee problem these days (see exhibit A, above). Luckily for my wallet, I prefer McDonald's iced coffee - - it is much cheaper (and tastes better) than Starbucks, in my humble opinion. Still, every time I buy one, I feel kind of guilty. I have made iced coffee with my Keurig in the past, but the K-cups specifically for iced coffee are too expensive, and hot coffee + ice cubes = very watery iced coffee.

Yesterday, I rememberd that Pioneer Woman did a post last year about making your own iced coffee, so I decided to look through her archives. Off to the store I went for supplies, and got down to business.



Pioneer Woman's recipe uses two gallons of water and a pound of coffee, but I didn't have a container big enough to mix that much in, so I halved the recipe and made just one gallon of concentrate. I recycled one of our gallon water jugs which worked out perfectly. I poured half the bag of ground coffee into the jug, and then filled the rest of the jug with spring waterThen, I let it sit at room temperature for about 8 hours.





When it was done steeping, I strained the coffee concentrate from the grounds, per Pioneer Woman's instructions. Then, it went into the fridge to chill overnight.




I decided to try Vietnamese iced coffee (using sweetened condensed milk as a sweetener). First, I filled my reusable cup with ice. then I filled it half-way with coffee concentrate. Next, I added 2 tablespoons of sweetened condensed milk, and a good splash of half and half. I went to stir it and of course, all of the ice cubes had fused together! So, I grabbed a cocktail shaker, poured everything in it, and gave it a good shaking. Everything got mixed, and it was actually nice and frothy when I poured it back into my cup. I think I will use this method from here on out!

The verdict? It is really, really good iced coffee. I wasn't sure that I would like it, but I actually love it. I'm so excited! Total cost? $8.67 for the coffee and the sweetened condensed milk (I always have half and half on hand so I didn't count that). I used approximately 1 cup of concentrate, and there are 16 cups in a gallon, so I should get about 16 iced coffees per batch. That works out to about 54 cents per coffee, as opposed to $2.11 at McDonalds. Yay!

As far as using sweetened condensed milk instead of sugar to sweeten the coffee? I really liked that, too. I had never heard of doing that before but I am glad I gave it a try. 

4 comments:

Nicky said...

Oh this looks delicious! Especially so right now since I can't drink coffee at the moment - having acid reflux problems so am trying a low acid lifestyle, which sadly means no coffee :( But when I do make my own iced coffee, I bypass the ice cube problem by using those plastic cubes that you just use and re-use after freezing again. And I love adding the sugar-free International Delight flavored creamers to mine for sweetness. Ohhhh, now I'm drooling!

Emily said...

Neil and I love to figure out how much things cost per unit. Glad that you do, too!

Heather said...

Bummer on the acid reflux, Nicky. I tend to have that same problem too, but it only seems to be on occasion that coffee bothers me. I don't drink a ton of it - - one to two cups per day. Interestingly, I've read that cold brewing cuts down on the acidity - - not sure why that would be, but there you have it. It never even dawned on me to use those reuseable ice cubes...that's a great idea!

Emily, I love figuring out cost savings on different items! I make laundry detergent too, and that is a HUGE savings.

Cheryl said...

This does indeed sound delicious! Will pass this on to Ashton and Eric, Eric loves iced coffee!

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