It’s warmer, and I make damn good iced coffee, so here is my recipe.

Start with quality beans. There is a saying that says, “Anything worth doing is worth doing right”.  I don’t think that applies to everything, but it certainly does to coffee.  Iced especially.

Mine is whole bean, organic, shade-grown and fair trade, because I’m “like that”.

Make coffee as you normally would, but do it double-strength. 1 standard coffee scoop equals 2 tablespoons, and one scoop of the ground beans makes 2 cups of coffee. Simply – a tablespoon of coffee grounds per cup for normal joe, and so two tablespoons per cup for iced.

This is as good a time as any to give you my two cents about coffee-making methods. French presses rule. Coffee pots take up huge amounts of space and don’t make coffee nearly as well.

I recommend only doing a day or two’s worth of coffee at a time. Day-old ice coffee isn’t horrible like day-old regular coffee, but if it sits too long, even in the fridge, it’s just as gross.

While your coffee is brewing (or steeping), put as much sugar as you’d like in the bottom of a clean glass jar. (The glass jar trick is something I got from my grandmother – the Italian one.) The glass holds up to the heat better than a plastic pitcher would, and, of course, if you use an old sauce jar like I did, you’re recycling, and woo hoo for that!

Pour the hot coffee on the sugar and stir it to dissolve. Alternatively, you can make simple syrup so that people who don’t want sugar in their iced coffee can drink this along with people who do.  If you think that’ll be the case, though, it’s simpler to make two jars and label them sweet and non.  But I give you options.

Screw on the lid and move the jar carefully to the fridge. It’s really hot (I burned myself). It will also look like swamp water in a jar in your fridge. Warn your family you haven’t lost your mind bottling pond scum; it’s just coffee.

Don’t add milk; wait until it’s being served to do that, or it will taste off.

THE NEXT MORNING:

Pack plenty of ice in your cup. Brewing the coffee double-strength is what helps it stand up to being watered down by ice melting.

Pour the coffee over the ice. I probably didn’t have to tell you that, but I had a picture for this step. It was pretty tricky snapping photos with one hand while pouring with the other, and I managed to do it without spilling or dropping the camera. So just appreciate this pouring photo, even if you don’t need it, ok? Thanks. You’re awesome.

Add your milk, stick in a straw if you want one (I like mine bendy, and with pretty red stripes as you can see), and enjoy!

Happy summery mornings to you!

My coffee is organic, fair-trade, shade grown and whole bean. Always. I’m a total hipster snob about it, I know. I also love micro-roasters, which, like a micro-brewery would for beer, make small artisan batches of coffee instead of churning it out, loveless style, in a big factory. Also, I have always loved small business, especially ones that employ eco-friendly, socially conscious practices, so I was pretty excited to find out about Good Dog Coffee, which is a micro-roaster based in Maryland. They brew coffee that hits my four requirements, and they teamed up with Manos por Patas [the organization in Puerto Rico that helped us rescue Tino] to make a “Sato” blend ["Sato" is the slang term for strays in Puerto Rico.] A portion of the proceeds goes to help them.

I waited until I’d had a few cups before I talked about it, because I didn’t want to endorse a product that sucked. This is why the bag in my photo is opened and rumpled, not pretty and smooth. This is serious journalism going on here!

I love the coffee. It’s up there with some of the best I’ve had, and the price, $12.95 per pound, is exactly what I would feel comfortable paying for a coffee of this quality with the proceeds going to charity.