You may have tried cold brew iced coffee, served Vietnamese-style with sweetened condensed milk, and even dolloped with butter, but if you haven't tried pressure-brewed iced coffee—AKA nitro coffee—you need to add it to your summer bucket list. Small roasters from California to Florida have started brewing their own takes on the technique, which features a froth-topped brew that looks more like a stout beer than something you'd find in a Starbucks cup. To up the fancy factor, this brew is often served in chalices and pint glasses to show off its bubbly look, though there's nothing fizzy about its taste.
The coffee gets its signature head from a nitrogen tap, just like the one you'd find on a keg of beer, though it tastes more like the crema on an espresso than that first sip of Guinness. The nitro method brings out the sweeter flavors in the coffee, too—so much so that Victor Vasquez, director of coffee at Dolcezza, told the Washington Post that when he first tried pressure-brewed iced coffee, he swore the process infused the drink with sugar. Spoiler: It turns out that the type of coffee you use and the type of gas the system uses—straight nitrogen or a mix of carbon dioxide-nitrogen—can affect how sweet or creamy the brew is.
You can find pressure-brewed iced coffee at Stumptown Coffee in Los Angeles, New York, Portland, Ore., and Seattle, Endgrain Coffee Bar in Pitman, N.J., and Commune and Co. in Tampa, Fla., just to name a few. If you can't find one in your area—and a Crossroads-esque road trip isn't in your immediate future—you can also try it straight from the can: Cuvée Coffee's Black and Blue is sold at several Whole Foods and gourmet grocery stores nationwide.
Candace Braun Davison writes, edits, and produces lifestyle content that ranges from celebrity features to roll-up-your-sleeves DIYs, all while relentlessly pursuing the noblest of causes: the quest for the world's best chocolate chip cookie.
