Cafe con Hielo

Why this works

Café con hielo solves the two problems of iced espresso at once. Pour hot espresso over ice and it chills in seconds, which captures its aromatics before they can evaporate or oxidise, the same reasoning behind a Japanese iced coffee. Espresso left to cool slowly on a counter goes flat and slightly sour. And because the coffee is hot when the sugar goes in, the sugar dissolves completely, so the drink is evenly sweet rather than bitter at the top and syrupy at the bottom.

Serving the two separately is not theatre. The drinker pours when they are ready to drink, so the ice has no time to melt into the coffee first. A single espresso and four large cubes gives you a drink that is cold but still tastes of coffee. Smaller cubes, or ice that sits in the coffee for five minutes, dilute it to brown water.

Large cubes matter for the same reason. Melting happens at the surface, and a few big cubes have far less surface area than a glass of crushed ice. They chill the coffee quickly and then melt slowly.

This is the default Spanish summer coffee, ordered as readily as a cortado from June until the end of September. It is a cousin of the freddo espresso and the caffè leccese, and like both of them it was worked out by bar staff in a hot country who needed a cold coffee that could be made in under a minute.

Variations

• Con leche y hielo: a café con leche, sweetened while hot and poured over ice.
• Bombón con hielo: a café bombón, stirred and poured over ice.
• Con limón: a wedge of lemon in the ice glass, close to a mazagran.
• Double: a double espresso and five or six cubes in a taller glass.