We have had a few requests over the summer for iced cappuccinos. My first response is to always offer up an iced latte as we don’t currently have iced cappuccinos on the menu. Honestly iced cappuccinos are a bi of a mystery to me. I started to think that what our customers were looking for was a drink similar to an iced latte but with textured milk.
After experimenting with normal methods of steaming milk and then pouring over an iced shot of espresso, it became apparent that this is a bad way of going about making an iced cappuccino. The hot milk over the ice melts and waters down the drink immediately.
Then I cam across a post in LifeHacker explaining how to use a french press to make a foamed milk cappuccino. This is what I was looking for. While they call for heated milk, the same technique can be used with cold milk. Using a french press as a milk frother, we can texture the milk with out actually steaming it and making it hot.
After looking around a bit it turns out that there are multiple companies selling items that look just like french presses but are made specifically for frothing milk. I picked this one up at amazon and will be playing with it this winter. By next summer we should have iced cappuccinos added to our menu.
I know this is nothing new to many of you. It was a fun road of discovery and I wanted to share with everyone. Feel free to comment with any techniques or hints.