Pressure Cooked Iced Coffee FTW

pressure cooked coffee beans

Whether it’s whipping up the TikTok-famous Dalgona coffee or baking vegan/cruelty-free/keto-friendly/[insert more trends here] bread for the gram, the lockdown has created inspo all over. With ample time at hand and no sense of life’s usual markers, nothing is off-limits. Want to redo your bathroom? Sure — there are hundreds of Pinterest boards. Mulled wine? Somewhere out there, there is a YouTuber making a video about it this very second.

Rona Got Me Like da Vinci

My own lockdown adventure led me to get creative with my good ole pressure cooker. Either the heat got to my head, or I just ran out of Dripdash... Either way, my go-to chili pot got subbed in for a coffee brewer. Rather than using my other 20 pieces of brewing equipment, I decided to go with my trusty friend... 10/10 the heat must've gotten to my head.

After conducting some careful research and taste-testing one too many cups, here's what I found worked best [in case you lose it too]:

Inventor’s Guide to an Unconventional Coffee Masterpiece 

Ingredients:

  1. 1 cup of ground coffee - medium-fine setting  
  2. Measuring cup
  3. Filtered water 
  4. Pressure Cooker or Instant Pot
  5. Cheesecloth or another filter
  6. Large glass bottle or pitcher (used to store the concentrate post-brewing)
Step 1
Start off with the proper beans — I used some of my favorite (Ethiopia Yirgacheffe). Go for something you'll be familiar with so you can taste-test later and compare to your standard brew. 
Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Dripdash Whole Beans
Step 2
Grind beans to a medium pour-over setting. We're going for 1:8 coffee to water ratio — so figure out the maximum volume you can fit safely in your pressure cooker or instant pot, and follow this ratio based on volume, rather than weight.
ground beans Dripdash
Step 3
Based on my experiment, I went with 1 cup coffee grounds to 8 cups water, slowly added to ensure proper saturation.
pouring water in pressure cooker Dripdash experiment
Step 4
Now time to get caffeinated — I found it extracted best with 5 minutes at boiling point. Turn on your pressure cooker or Instant Pot, and once it starts boiling, set a timer for 5 minutes before turning off the heat and letting it cool.
pressure cooker on
Step 5
After allowing the coffee mixture to cool, use a cheesecloth over a plastic funnel and start slowly pouring the concentrate into the bottle. This should remove any excess grounds.
straining the concentrate using a cheesecloth
Step 6
Almost there — let it chill for a bit, and then pour over ice to chill the coffee.
pouring concentrate over ice
Step 7
Add the desired amount of oat milk/water to dilute properly. Reminder: this is a 2x strength concentrate so unless you want to be buzzed on hot bean juice and get nicknamed “jitters” for the rest of your life, don’t overdo it!
oat milk over coffee

BOOM, ENJOY ☕️

Shaken, Not Stirred - or Stirred, Not Shaken? The Choice is Yours!

Some key observations made during the process:

  • The quality of your coffee grounds determines the flavor of your iced coffee. I first started off with 1-month-old beans and turned out to have a kind of sludgy/grainy flavor. Something about this super high-heat extraction can bring out odd flavors that don't come out of normal boiling techniques.
  • Use filtered water. Coffee is 98% water, so use the best ingredients possible to get the best results.
  • You can make your final coffee concentrate as strong or weak as you want — To get a stronger brew, use more grounds and/or increase cooking time.

Keep Calm & Drink On

Don’t fret if you can’t get the iced coffee concentrate exactly right the first time. There are many factors that can influence the way your final cup of coffee ends up tasting:

  • Age of the coffee beans used 
  • Grind settings
  • Type of water used
  • Time pressure cooking, time letting it chill post-cooking/pre-straining 

Because all of the listed factors (and more) which can affect your cuppa Joe, make sure you have fun with it! Play around with your ingredients and your instant pot a little bit to achieve the right flavor you’re looking for.

Reimagining Craft Coffee is no joke folks — if you are creative and adventurous enough, you can have some fun with it. So what are you waiting for? Get your barista apron on and start cooking... or should I say, pressure cooking? 🤠

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