Iced Coffee Primer

A drip of sweat slowly appears on your brow, and you’re angry and you don’t know why. Enter iced coffee, your sanity in a world gone mad. But what do I order again? Cold cold press, iced coffee…uhhh maybe I shouldn’t be here. I’m here to say relax. I’ve got your lingo lessons on a seemingly complex topic of cold coffee. 


Let’s talk about a few terms:


Iced coffee: The blanket term of anything to do with ice and coffee in a cup. Boom. 

Cold Brew: Coffee that is brewed with cold water over a longer period of time than hot coffee. This isn’t so hard, is it?

Slow Drip: Iced coffee, or more specifically cold-brewed coffee brewed in a process of 8-24 hours slowly dripping water over a bed of coffee grounds. Very tasty compared to full immersion cold brew, but with a more syrupy texture. 

Full Immersion Cold Brew: Coffee grounds tied in a bag and steeped for 8-24 hours in cold water. You can also brew coffee this way in a French press which is the easiest way to go at home. 

Japanese-style iced coffee, aka flash-brewed coffee: Iced coffee brewed with hot water directly over ice. Delicious and syrupy and easy to do at home. 


That’s it! You now have a better lexicon for use in impressing your friends or not looking like a noob at your local shop. Go ahead, try them all and get rid of all that pent-up summer anger.

A two-year birthday thought:

This week marks our two year anniversary. I’d like to express my deepest thanks to you for making us a part of your lives. Thank you for letting us get to know you, letting us obsess about coffee so you can hopefully enjoy this beautiful beverage deeply. My gratitude can really not be contained. 

To be candid, I wasn’t sure if a business of this type would ever work, especially in a country where you can literally have it your way every day. 

I know sometimes it may seem that we are coffee nazis and we don't want you to have any fun, but the real reason I started Black Black Coffee was to bring awareness of how good coffee can taste these days with drastic changes in farming and brewing techniques. So much has changed in the coffee world and I thought it was time these new delicious coffees were greatly appreciated. I just didn't want anything to get in the way of the coffee, even if that meant cutting out large potential segments of customers by serving coffee in simpler ways.  

If there is one strategy for us as a shop its for our care for the farmers to be equal to our care for the customers. In my mind, one cannot start to become more important than the other.  I care deeply about how hard these coffee farmers work, and how they desperately hope people enjoy the fruit from their labor.

To me good service is offering a product that is the best possible version it can be. We've strived hard to carry roasters who are doing incredible things to make coffee farming sustainable, and make it a good life for everyone involved. And that must happen to the things we consume here in our very lucky country: we must know the story from beginning to end. How were people treated, paid, how was the environment affected by this product? 

You can be assured we try our best to find the best coffee roasters who try to bring farmers out of poverty (yes, the majority live in great poverty) and who help raise quality. Sure, at the end of the day it's just coffee to you and that is good and fine, but hopefully you'll feel a little better at the end of this all that you helped and didn't harm your surroundings. 

Thank you for supporting us, which supports those farmers who are the true heroes of this beautiful craft we call coffee. 

Joshua McNeilly, owner Black Black Coffee

Why we want you to throw away your Christmas presents, drink less coffee, and listen to Aretha Franklin



Coffee is a beautiful drink. We all know that. Though there are different preparations and presentations of the glorious beverage, we all agree on one thing: there's no better way to ease into the busy day than to drink black a coffee crafted by you or a seasoned veteran. But what has happened to coffee these days? Its corporately taken over, bitter, and empty of meaning. 

Enter: hand-crafted coffee, a few of the right tools to grind and brew, and a lovely therapeutic routine. 

Coffee deserves respect. R.E.S.P.E.C.T. After all, it does award you with creativity, brilliance, and joy. Why wouldn't you respect it?  And what would you do without it? You'd die a sad, early death, that's what. 

So do yourself a favor: return your $200 "coffee" maker that can't make coffee better than a handless 7-year-old, and invest in the following: a burr grinder, a pourover, aeropress, or chemex, and coffee sourced and roasted by a local craftsmen. 

We know your freshly-roasted coffee costs more, but don't you think there's a reason for that? All coffees are not equal. Coffee grown well is far more time-intensive than commodity-grade crud. So, pay the price and rest easy that farmers were paid almost what they deserve, and enjoy this defect-free gold. Even if you have to drink less to afford it, what are you losing out on? Its not like drinking 6 cups a day is healthy. 1-3 however, yes. After all, its still a beverage that takes just as much work to produce as wine, selling at a fraction of the price of wine. So feel better about yourself, your farmers, your baristas, and enjoy good coffee from good people who care about its presentation. 

Find a barista who can talk you through what you're drinking, who can answer your many questions about coffee, who is willing to tell you their recipes and techniques to the proper cup. You'll be glad you did.