Although hot coffee still fills most cups, cold coffee blends are racing up café menus and kitchen counters. This week, London roasters Square Mile rolled out two chilled drinks that skip the kettle altogether. The pair shows off newer cold brew techniques and familiar espresso characteristics in a glass instead of a mug.
The initial one is a straight-up cold brew steeped 21 hours in filtered water kept at room temperature. Because extraction happens without heat, the concentrate ends up with roughly two-thirds less acidity than a piping hot drip mug. Arabica beans from Brazil and Guatemala were used; the importer says these lots give mild cocoa notes with low bitterness. Less acidic flavor is a hallmark of cold extraction methods. Cold extraction lets roasters blend origins to tailor body and sweetness without heat variables. Additionally, this method helps create a creamy texture that enhances the drinking experience.
Square Mile dilutes the concentrate one-to-one before bottling, so it lands light yet nutty on the tongue.
Drink number two looks closer to classic espresso but built for ice. Named Macinale, the drink pulls a pan-Latin American espresso blend that uses Okanagon strains from Guatemala for bright acidity, then balances it with chocolates, providing body.
Macinale: espresso reborn for ice, blending Guatemalan brightness and chocolate depth.
The roaster sets the burrs finer than normal espresso, then pushes low-pressure, 60-degree water through the puck for two minutes. The result keeps big roasty flavor yet feels cool and silky. Company notes say the shot yields one ounce of concentrate that tastes like brownie edges without the usual bite.
Both bottles chill in 90-second snap-chillers that drop the liquid from 58 °F to 37 °F before it hits shelves. Lab tests showed pH readings of 4.8 for the cold brew and 5.0 for Macinale, softer than the 5.3 typical in hot-brew drip.
Caffeine stayed strong at 190 mg per ten-ounce cold brew and 120 mg in the four-ounce Macinale pour, proving that slow or low-pressure extraction does not strip buzz.
Square Mile will sell 250 ml glass bottles at farmers markets and through bike couriers this week. A 6-bottle pack of either version lists for £22; cherry pondera cups come free for the initial fifty orders.
