Scorchio!

It's hot!!  Wooooo!

The British are obsessed about the weather, because it can change so damn much even in the space of a day.  We've had a desperately cold, late and wet spring and yay, we've had nearly 2 weeks of hot sun so far.  Hot for us Brits is anything above 23c and it's been reaching 32c and averaging around 25 or 26. 

So yeah.  I've been drinking vast amounts of iced coffee.  I've been making my own, because, well, reasons. 

It's a bit fiddly, but so worth it (and so much cheaper than £3- £4 a pop at Costa / Starbucks).

So I get 2 bags of single estate coffee from Lidl.  Seriously, it's so good and it's £2 for a 200g bag.  Then I add 3 - 4 pints of cold water and then stick it in the fridge overnight.  Make sure the coffee is completely saturated by water though.  If you choose to grind your own (Lidl's has a kilo of Lavazza espresso beans for £9.99), then you could grind it fairly coarse.  Which helps.

Then I sieve it with one of those plastic mesh sieves used for jam making, pressing the coffee a little to make sure I get as much water out as possible.  This can take a while and can be a bit messy! 

Then you filter it again, using paper coffee filters, muslin, or perhaps even a cafetiere / french press. 

It's definitely worth doing the sieve thing, it speeds up the process.

That's your concentrate.  It's lasted us a week and me and the Mr. have been having one a day, sometimes two.  That was with 3 pints of water, but I reckon it'd be just as good with 4 pints.  Once it's all filtered, stick it back in the fridge.

To make a drink, I put an espresso shot worth (or alter to taste) over a tall glass of ice, add some milk and you're good to go.  If you like it sweet, add sugar, but it doesn't dissolve too well in cold drinks.  However, you can get flavoured syrups that they use in coffee shops to make speciality latte's.  I'm personally a big fan of gingerbread.  I've since discovered that it's much cheaper to make your own, but that's for another day.    If I want to make it a little indulgent, I add some single cream (not much, just a dash. 

A facebook friend makes hers with coconut milk and if you want to make a Vietnamese style iced coffee, try sweetened condensed milk.  I'd be interested to know what the non dairy alternatives are like - eg, sweetened soya milk etc.  I know that some soya milk brands curdle in hot coffee, so I don't know what happens in cold coffee.