Iced Caffe Latte
A cold, milky, properly coffee-flavoured iced latte, made with whatever you have in the kitchen. You do not need an espresso machine, just a coffee that is strong enough to stand up to four times its volume of cold milk.
At a glance
- Coffee : milk
- 1:4
- Active time
- 3 min
- Total time
- 8 min
- Makes
- 1 tall glass
- Serve
- Over ice
- Kit
- Moka pot or AeroPress
Ingredients
Note: This page used to depend on a single capsule system that is no longer sold. The capsule version now lives on the capsule caffè latte page.
Method
-
Choose the coffee: moka pot
For the moka pot, brew a three-cup pot with water to the valve and the basket filled level. Take it off the heat as soon as it starts to sputter. Use 50 ml of the result.
This gives the closest thing to espresso, strong and slightly bitter. See the full moka pot method.
4 to 5 minutes -
Or: AeroPress
For an AeroPress, use 18 g of fine coffee and 80 g of water at 90°C. Stir, steep one minute, press hard. You get about 60 ml of concentrate.
Cleaner and less bitter than the moka pot.
1 minute 30 seconds -
Or: instant espresso
Dissolve two teaspoons of instant espresso powder in 50 ml of hot water. It is the quickest option and the weakest in flavour, but perfectly good with syrup.
-
Milk over ice, then coffee
Fill a tall glass with ice, add the syrup if using, pour in the cold milk, then pour the hot coffee slowly over the top. Stir before drinking.
Coffee onto milk rather than bare ice means less ice melts and the drink stays strong.
Why this works
What makes a latte taste like coffee rather than cold milk is concentration. Espresso is roughly eight to ten times stronger than filter coffee, so a 40 ml shot still reads clearly through four times its volume of milk. Any brewer that produces something close to that concentration will make a good iced latte. Filter coffee will not. You would need to use almost as much coffee as milk, and then it is not a latte.
A moka pot gets you closest. It brews under a little steam pressure, about one to two bar against an espresso machine's nine, and produces a strong, heavy, slightly bitter coffee at around one to seven. That bitterness is useful in an iced latte, because cold and milk both blunt it. An AeroPress at a short ratio makes a cleaner, sweeter concentrate. Instant espresso is the least characterful, but it dissolves completely and adds no grit.
The pour order matters as much as the coffee. Hot coffee straight onto ice melts a lot of it in seconds and thins the drink. Onto cold milk that is already over ice, the coffee is chilled by the milk, the ice melts less, and the drink tastes stronger for longer. Cold also dulls sweetness, which is why iced lattes are usually sweetened, and why syrup rather than sugar, since sugar will not dissolve in cold milk.
With an espresso machine, the method is the same with a double shot. See iced latte.
Variations
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Questions
Can I make an iced latte without an espresso machine?
Yes. Use 50 to 60 ml of strong coffee from a moka pot, an AeroPress or instant espresso powder, and pour it over cold milk and ice.
Can I use regular brewed coffee for an iced latte?
It is too weak to stand up to that much milk. Brew it at least double strength, or use more coffee and less milk, which makes it closer to an iced coffee with milk.
What is the best milk for an iced latte?
Whole milk for body and sweetness. Oat milk is the best plant option for cold drinks.
What happened to the CBTL version of this recipe?
The capsule system it used was discontinued. The capsule version of a latte, which works with any current capsule machine, is on the capsule caffè latte page.