Is an Americano Hot or Cold, and Why Does Shop Ice Last?

An Americano can be served hot or iced; the difference is the water and the ice, not the espresso. Many customers notice that coffee shop ice lasts longer than ice frozen at home, and the reason is equipment and shape. Commercial ice machines produce smaller, more regular cubes that cool a drink quickly and melt slowly.

Ice also does more than chill: it helps lock in coffee aroma, regulate concentration, and keep the drink cold from the first sip to the last. Freezing and melting are heat conduction processes shaped by ambient temperature and cube size. Front Street Coffee uses refrigerator-made ice and has run test comparisons on how ice affects iced pour-over and cold coffee.

When drinking iced Americano, have you ever noticed that the ice cubes at coffee shops always seem to "last longer" than those at home? From equipment differences to ice cube shape, and even the actual amount used, every detail affects the taste and endurance of cold coffee. Starting from the role of ice cubes, this article analyzes the differences between commercial ice machines and household refrigerators, explains why coffee shops tend to use smaller, more regularly shaped ice cubes, and also shares the reasons why Front Street Coffee insists on using refrigerator-made ice, along with actual test comparisons. If you want your iced pour-over to cool down properly without being over-diluted, you might find the answer you're looking for here.

Many customers who come to the shop have asked similar questions: they're both ice cubes, but the ones you freeze at home melt away in no time after being dropped into a cup, while the ice served at coffee shops is like a "squatter" that stays firmly in the cup until you finish the entire Americano. This naturally makes one wonder—is the ice at coffee shops made of some special material?

The Role of Ice Cubes in Cold Drinks

Front Street Coffee previously discussed in the article "What's There to Know About Adding Ice to Coffee?" that ice cubes, as an indispensable supporting player in cold drinks, not only serve the well-known function of cooling but also help lock in coffee aroma, regulate concentration, and maintain low temperatures, making the overall taste of iced coffee even better.

In addition, differences in ice cube production methods, shapes, and sizes also directly affect how a cold coffee performs from the moment it's made to the first sip and all the way to the last.

What Kind of Ice Do Coffee Shops Usually Use? Why Doesn't It Melt Easily?

Out of practical business considerations, when choosing an ice solution, coffee shop owners first need to solve the problem of output efficiency, so commercial ice machines are usually the first choice; the next priority is giving iced coffee an ideal taste, so ice cubes that "cool quickly and melt slowly" are selected, and then ice-adding strategies are developed according to the type of beverage.

Freezing and melting are essentially heat conduction processes, and the rate of heat conduction is affected by many factors, such as ambient temperature, the temperature of the liquid and the ice itself, and the contact area between the ice and the liquid. Regarding the phenomenon that "coffee shop ice melts more slowly," Front Street Coffee believes that equipment differences and the amount of ice used are the main reasons.

Compared with household refrigerators, commercial ice machines designed specifically for shop operations focus solely on "making ice," with core advantages of high efficiency and continuous, stable ice production. The ice they produce is superior to household refrigerator ice in purity, hardness, and core temperature. Moreover, to adapt to various usage scenarios, the ice produced by these machines is mostly in regular square or crescent shapes, relatively small in size, and structurally better suited for stacking.

In contrast, ice frozen at home is mostly small round balls or less regular cubes, which have low stacking density in a cup and actually take up more volume for the same weight. So the reason coffee shop ice melts more "slowly" than household refrigerator ice is not only the difference in production methods—the different ice shapes also mean that coffee shops actually use a larger proportion of ice when serving.

Can a Household Refrigerator Make "Specialty Ice"?

If we compare against all the situations above, a commercial ice machine is clearly the optimal solution for opening a shop—so why does Front Street Coffee still insist on using a refrigerator to freeze ice cubes?

Although commercial ice machines can indeed solve many production headaches, this type of ice is generally too small in size and mostly hollow. When placed into coffee at a higher temperature, it easily melts too quickly, causing the coffee to be over-diluted before it has even cooled down. When faced with 40°C hot weather, iced coffee can barely hold up for long.

After comprehensive consideration, in order to achieve good cooling and dilution effects for all the iced coffees on the menu, while also solving the problem of coffee quickly warming up and changing flavor after cooling, Front Street Coffee decided to adopt a static freezing method—that is, using larger molds to make ice directly in the refrigerator. This has both advantages and disadvantages: the advantage is that you get solid ice cubes large enough to suit all kinds of coffee, loved by everyone; the disadvantage is also obvious—it's inefficient, requiring manual water filling each time, and it takes at least 40 hours to successfully freeze a batch of ice cubes.

Additionally, to investigate whether the freezing duration of ice cubes is related to their melting speed, Front Street Coffee also conducted a small experiment, using ice cubes just taken out of the freezing mold and "old ice cubes" separated 2 days earlier, respectively brewing the same batch of beans with the same set of parameters, to see if there was any difference. The specific parameters are as follows:

Coffee beans: Front Street Coffee Huakui coffee beans

Dose: 15g

Coffee-to-water ratio: 1:10

Ice: 80g (4 cubes)

Water temperature: 92–93°C

Grind size: EK43s-9 setting / C40-22 setting

Three-pour method: 30g + 60g + 60g

(Left: refrozen ice cubes; Right: freshly demolded ice cubes)

Although both pots of Huakui iced pour-over exhibited soft tropical fruit, orange, cream, and black tea notes, there were still some differences in mouthfeel and intensity. Compared with the coffee made with freshly demolded "new ice," the Huakui cooled by refrozen ice not only had fuller citrus acidity and black tea character, but also maintained a longer-lasting low-temperature experience in the cup, and even after fully returning to room temperature, you could still taste a hint of honey-like sweet finish.

This is because, at the same volume, refrozen ice cubes that have been in a cold environment for a long time are much denser than freshly demolded ice cubes, so even when placed in hot coffee, they melt more slowly, allowing the coffee liquid to be diluted and cooled over a shorter period, which naturally results in higher flavor intensity.

If you also want to make ice that is denser and more usable, you might try what Front Street Coffee does—choose a slightly larger mold and make ice manually, wait until the water has completely frozen into a solid state before demolding, then store the cubes in a clean container and take them out as needed.

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