For The Best Summer Coffee Refreshment, Grab A Ziplock Bag And Your Favorite Brew

There was a time, not so long ago, when sampling an innovative new coffee drink required either the cooperation of your local coffeehouse or a spate of personal creativity. In this internet age, though, we are constantly inundated with new ideas for sprucing up our morning brew. The high temperatures of summer call for cooler forms of coffee, and the internet has delivered an answer, with a simple technique that creates a delightfully refreshing coffee slushy in the comfort of one's own kitchen.

Some of the viral coffee drinks on TikTok are certainly better than others. On social media, the game is catching eyes as much or more than delivering a decent recipe. This coffee slushy, though, manages to do both at once. The drink is about technique as much as anything else, requiring only basic ingredients and a simple method to produce a noteworthy frappe-style frozen coffee.

To start this unique iced coffee recipe, all you need is cold coffee and a zip-top bag. You pour the coffee into the bag until it is around one-third to one-half full, then zip the top shut and lay it flat in the freezer. Once it's frozen, you can use a rolling pin or meat tenderizer to crush the coffee ice into small pieces while it's still inside the bag — the thinner the coffee layer, the easier it is to smash apart. Next, dump those fine ice chunks into a glass, mix in your preferred milk until it's nice and slushy, and enjoy.

It might be a bit more work than picking up a frappe at your local coffee shop, but this viral trick both saves you money and puts you in control of every aspect of the drink's flavor. Starting with the main ingredient, you can whip up a batch of homemade cold brew coffee for the backbone, but also a pot of strong leftover coffee would work fine here, as would a bottle of store-bought cold brew concentrate. Really, you just need a strong coffee that you enjoy drinking, be it homemade or something that you pick up at the store. The same goes for the milk that you choose — use whatever you'd pour into a hot or iced coffee on a typical day.

As for sweetener, some recipes suggest adding it at the end, like you would a typical cup of coffee, but there are a couple of arguments for adding it before the freeze. First, things like sugar, honey, or flavored syrups will dissolve much more easily in a warmer environment than they will in the icy final drink. The other reason, however, is that adding sugar to the coffee will actually make it easier to turn it into a slushy after it is frozen. Without any sweetener, the drink is largely reliant on the addition of milk at the end for its slushiness. Sugars dissolved in the solution, however, actually disrupt the formation of ice crystals, making it simpler to create that perfect texture. So, if you're the sort that enjoys spiking their morning brew with an array of flavored coffee syrups, your viral crushed cold brew frappe will be enhanced by them in more ways than one.