Free U.S. Shipping on Orders Over $40
The warm weather is upon us and with it iced coffee season! It’s no secret that we love cold brew here at Corvus; we have five different kinds in bottles alone not including the many Kyoto cold brews you can try at our DTC location. But those all take hours to make, and if I’m outside by the pool craving iced coffee, I don’t always want to wait until sundown to drink it! In that case, I’ll use a method we refer to simply as “flash brew” in which we use hot water to brew coffee directly onto ice. It makes a really sweet cup of iced coffee in mere minutes rather than waiting hours for immersion-style cold brew.
I enjoy using the chemex for this for a couple of reasons. For one, it’s big enough to hold a few cups so I don’t have to keep brewing non-stop, and it’s also its own decanter which is pretty handy, too.
Here’s where I get hung up when it comes to recipe creation for flash brew. When making hot coffee, the cup is entirely made up of water that passes through the bed of grounds. In the case of flash brew, some of the the water is from melted ice that was not used to brew the coffee. But it still affects the final strength which, by the way, is constantly changing as the ice melts. I’m a bit of a numbers nerd with my recipes, so this melting ice concept had me chasing my tail.
I was using our Boloya from Ethiopia which is always delicious, so how hard could it be? I tried several things: Increasing the ground coffee dose by 50%, 100%, coarse grind, fine grind, I even tried brewing the coffee at a super strong concentration and adding the ice afterward. Nothing seemed to be working, and that was when I learned my lesson. I was over-thinking it. So, I finally tried something simple: Take half of the brew water away and replace it with ice in the decanter. Using half of the normal amount of water to brew coffee would make me expect an under-extracted sour tasting cup that is too strong. But what resulted was sweet, bright, and balanced.
I always say this in the coffee classes I teach: The numbers don’t mean anything if it doesn’t taste good. And just when you think you know a thing, coffee will humble you. I guess that’s just the magic of it all.
Here’s the exact recipe I used:
21 grams of Ethiopia Boloya ground medium
160 grams ice in the bottom of the chemex
176 grams of boiling water to brew
If you don’t have a chemex, use my trainer code “flashbrew" for 10% off online or in store!
limited to 20 customers
Headquartered in Denver, Colorado, Corvus Coffee Roasters takes a direct, relationship-driven approach to sourcing and roasting. Founded in 2010 by Phil and Autumn Goodlaxson, the company is known for multi-year producer partnerships, a Farmer Focus Program, and strong internal training and benefits for staff. Corvus emphasizes storytelling, public engagement, and initiatives that support gender equity and inclusion across its operations.
For Goodlaxson, a smaller menu isn’t about exclusivity. He wants Corvus to feel approachable for anyone who walks in, whether they already follow specialty coffee closely or not. Winning over a customer who’s never paid attention to single-origin coffee is more meaningful to him than competing for the attention of those already immersed in the scene. By keeping the emphasis on quality, he hopes to spark curiosity that can grow over time.
what we’re most proud of is the way that we do business at origin, and how those values translate to how we do business here in the U.S. The transfer of this knowledge that only comes from knowing the farmers we work with and working with them in person, to our partners is our key differentiator.
