Iced Coffee Hacks
It's been 2 weeks since I moved into my Junior Year apartment and coffee has been an essential component of these last two weeks. Now that I live in an apartment, and have to pay for things like groceries, I've been looking for ways to supplement my coffee addiction that don't involve driving to Starbucks and being late for class.
My real experience with coffee up to this point has been through Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts, or random coffee shops, I've never really been one to make my own coffee. When I got to college our dining halls gave out free coffee before 10:30 and there are 2 Starbucks and 2 other coffee shops on my campus that accept dining dollars (meal plan) for later in the day.
Now that I don't want to drive to Starbucks, and don't have an unlimited dining plan for the on-campus locations, I had to come up with options.
Tools Used:
My amazing grandmother bought me the white Keurig 2.0 as an apartment-warming gift, and one of my roommates brought an actual coffee pot.
*you in no way need to own both a Keurig and coffee pot, you can make all of these recipes with either.
Items Needed:
- reusable to-go iced coffee tumblers
- ground coffee
- k-cups
- flavor shots
Every morning I would get an iced coffee, an iced vanilla latte or an iced caramel macchiato. Its well known that the standard Keurig does not make iced coffee. So to achieve the iced coffee dreams we came up with options: at home cold brew and regular.
Iced Coffee
| For The Individual |
If you're trying to just make one cup of iced coffee before class your first step is to brew a cup of hot coffee. If you have a Keurig when you wake up put your favorite flavor of k-cup in and let it brew and sit until it's room temperature. If you have a regular coffee pot you may be able to program it to automatically begin brewing at a specific time (this is awesome). Once your coffee is brewed and room temperature pop it in the fridge. While your waiting for your coffee to get nice and cold you can go about the rest of your morning routine.
Right before you leave for class grab a reusable tumbler fill it with ice and pour in your coffee. I always add a teaspoon of sugar, half&half and a little almond milk to my iced coffee!
| For The Week |
If you're obsessed with iced coffee like I am, one cup will not suffice. By making a full pot of coffee, with either a coffee pot of a Keurig Carafe, and letting it cool then storing the entire pot in a plastic iced tea jug. you'll have coffee for at least a week. One of my roommates makes a pot every other day (shoutout to Kenzie for supplementing my coffee addiction) and we never run out.
Cold Brew
Making cold brew at home is surprisingly easy.
- Simply take your loose coffee grounds and water and pour them into a tupperware container, stir and store overnight.
- The next day take a micro strainer or place cheese cloth over a traditional strainer and place a second tupperware underneath.
- Pour the stored coffee into the strainer until just grounds are left in the strainer or cheese cloth.
- Then you have cold brewed coffee!
You can do this for both individual and several servings.
bonus hacks
| Coffee Iced Cubes |
Pour coffee into an ice cube tray and freeze to make iced cubes that won't water down your coffee. When they melt, your iced coffee will just be filled with more coffee!
| Flavor Shots |
If you don't have a Keurig, and can't buy flavored k-cups, flavor syrups are awesome. We buy Folgers coffee for our coffee pot and Folgers also makes flavor enhancers that you can add to full pots or individual cups.
