How Does Front Street Coffee Build a Plum Iced Americano?

Preserved plum, a cured snack that is sweet, sour, and salty, pairs better with iced coffee than hot drinks because heating or long soaking draws out a heavy salty-sour taste. Front Street Coffee shared three methods for plum iced Americano: a simple cold brew, a sugar-free sparkling version, and an iced pour-over. Each differs in bean choice, plum quantity, and extraction, giving distinct flavor layers.

The question of whether iced or hot Americano suits this drink comes down to the plum itself: its dry, hard texture needs time or heat to soften, which then releases strong salty-sour notes. Cold extraction avoids that, so the fruit acidity and sweetness stay balanced. Washed Kenyan beans, for example, carry a fruity aroma that echoes plum, making them a natural fit for the cold versions.

As a classic snack that blends sweet, sour, and salty flavors, preserved plum has been increasingly used in coffee specials in recent years. Because preserved plums are cured and tend to be hard in texture, heating or prolonged soaking will release a strong salty-sour taste, so compared with hot drinks, it is better suited to pairing with iced coffee. Front Street Coffee shared three ways to make preserved plum iced coffee: an easy cold brew, a sugar-free sparkling Americano, and a slightly experimental iced pour-over. Each method has its own considerations in bean selection, preserved plum amount, and extraction parameters, and the final flavor layers are all different. If you also want to try the collision of preserved plum and coffee at home, you might as well find the one that suits you best from these three methods.

When it comes to which childhood snack still retains its original taste today, Front Street's answer would be nine-processed preserved plum. The three flavors of sour, sweet, and salty blend with one another in the mouth, leaving you refreshed and cutting through richness after eating. When you are sleepy, hold one in your mouth, and the aroma of the candied fruit first slowly spreads across the tip of your tongue. Then the whole mouth fills with sourness, and the taste buds seem to awaken and begin to produce saliva and return sweetness. Very quickly, you feel energized again.

In fact, preserved plum, this everyday snack, also appears often in the coffee world. For example, when Front Street cups washed Kenyan coffee, the rich fruity aroma in the dry fragrance reminds people of preserved plum; preserved plum iced Americano also always makes it onto the hot lists of homemade coffee; and when some baristas develop new products, in order to give coffee specials a richer sense of layering, they also try adding preserved plum elements.

However, preserved plum is a cured product, mostly dry and hard, and during cooking it often needs heating or long soaking to soften, which then releases a strong salty-sour taste. So Front Street believes that compared with hot drinks, preserved plum is more suitable for pairing with refreshingly cold iced coffee. Below, Front Street presents three ways to make preserved plum iced coffee, for you to choose from.

Preserved Plum Cold Brew

If you want to know which coffee is the easiest to make and also most favored by the "lazy crowd," the answer is naturally cold brew. Adding preserved plum to cold brew not only makes the taste doubly sweet and sour, but over time also adds a layer of plum-like aroma to the iced coffee. Just like Front Street's previously shared "so easy anyone can do it" series, as long as you choose the right coffee beans and match the corresponding parameters, making a refreshing and delicious preserved plum cold brew at home is as easy as can be.

First, grind 30 grams of Panama sun-dried Butterfly coffee beans into powder and pour them into a cold brew pitcher. Choose a grind size like fine granulated sugar; the EK43s setting at Front Street's shop is 9.5. At the same time, toss in 5 preserved plums that you usually like to eat.

Next, add 300 grams of room-temperature water at a 1:10 coffee-to-water ratio, stir evenly, seal the opening with plastic wrap, then put it in the refrigerator and let it steep for 6 hours. Finally, filter out the coffee grounds with filter paper, add ice cubes to your liking, and it is ready to enjoy.

After several hours of waiting, the preserved plum cold brew finally made is not only full of fruity aroma, but also has a solid sense of clean sweetness. What surprised Front Street was that the combination of preserved plum and sun-dried Butterfly even extended into a special complex aroma, with flavors such as perilla, cherry, raspberry, and black grape, leaving a particularly deep impression.

Preserved Plum Sparkling Americano

When Front Street was learning how to make this preserved plum sparkling Americano, we saw that many tutorials online use preserved plums plus syrup and then marinate them overnight, or add water and rock sugar and boil them into preserved plum syrup. Here, Front Street mainly makes a sugar-free version of preserved plum sparkling Americano for those who do not like sweetness.

Step one: prepare 4 preserved plums, add hot water and swirl to mix evenly, then put it in the refrigerator to soak for one hour (there is no requirement for the amount of water, just enough to submerge them);

Step two: find a glass large enough, add ice cubes to about 2/3 of the glass, then pour in all the preserved plum water just soaked, and then pour in sparkling water until it is seven-tenths full;

Step three: use 20 grams of Sunflower Warm Sun blend coffee powder to extract 40 grams of espresso, and gently pour it over the top.

Because carbonated drinks naturally have a rich foam structure, even though it has not been boiled at high temperature, the carbon dioxide gas can still very well bring out the characteristics of the preserved plum, making the whole Americano both have the sweet aroma of iced coffee and the stimulating sensation brought by sparkling water, along with a touch of comfortable salty-sour and clean sweetness.

Preserved Plum Iced Pour-Over

Here it comes, here it comes, the iced pour-over with "wild moves" is here after all~

Just like the orange peel filter cup Front Street played with yesterday, adding ingredients to pour-over is no longer anything new nowadays. For example, flower petals, fruits, tea leaves, and other ingredients have long been "veteran actors." Although whether it succeeds in the end or fails completely depends on luck, everyone still has a lot of fun with it. So today let us try adding preserved plum to pour-over and see how it turns out.

Considering that preserved plums are mostly salty and sour, suitable for pairing with coffee beans that have a stronger sweetness, and also to harmonize the final flavor profile of the whole cup of coffee, Front Street here chooses Panama Elida Estate sun-dried Catuai as the brewing target. As for the other protagonist, the preserved plum, we will split it into two parts and add it in: first "hide" 3 pieces in the filter cup so they participate in extraction together with the coffee bed, then put another 2 pieces into the ice cubes in the server, so they remain soaking in the coffee liquid.

Iced pour-over parameters: 15 grams of coffee, coffee-to-water ratio 1:10, 75 grams of ice, fine grind: EK43s setting 9.5, water temperature: 91°C, filter cup: V60, brewing method: three-pour method (30 grams, 60 grams, 60 grams).

The Elida extracted together with preserved plum did not end up failing in the end. The pour-over coffee first has a light preserved plum fragrance on entry, then tropical ripe fruit flavors of mango and guava and the sweet-sour taste of cured plum, with a soft and delicate mouthfeel. But compared with the previous two coffee pairings, the pour-over version of preserved plum iced coffee is slightly flatter in flavor.

The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.