One of the best iced coffee makers is not just for the summertime, for some (me included), it’s an appliance that can feed a year-round passion. While heading to your favourite coffee shop for an iced this or that is a lot of fun, the £££s can start to add up quick, which is where these machines and gadgets are as essential as putting something on ice on a hot day.
The best iced coffee makers differ from the best coffee machines thanks to built-in settings or features that enable you to either make cold brew for yourself at home or pour specially brewed coffee over ice. They aren’t a neccesity, no, but if you mostly drink iced coffee they’ll certainly make your life easier.
To cover every budget, we’ve tested a cup which allows you to make cold brew at home, a budget filter machine, and a top of the range bean-to-cup machine that has built-in iced coffee programs. So all you need to do now, after reading our expert takes on each one in line with our coffee testing protocol, is decide which one suits you best.
The quick list
If you’re looking to get from A to B quick, then our quick list will get you where you need to shop, fast!
1. De’Longhi Eletta Explore Bean-to-Cup Coffee Machine
Our expert reviewer was blown away by the extensive menu of iced drinks with the Eletta. Iced drinks and cold brew are available, and all of that is available at just the push of a button. Though the price tag is astronomical, iced coffee lovers will be in heaven at home with this machine.
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2. Breville Iced+Hot Coffee Maker
This is a filter coffee maker that comes with a large double-walled cup which you can fill with ice. The machine is then perfectly sized to pour said filter coffee over your ice, and voila, you have an iced coffee at home. It doesn’t even come close to the Eletta above in terms of quality, but for the price, it’s a good stopgap, and the included cup is worth paying even half the price for in my opinion.
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3. GRIND Cold Brew Bottle
With this one, you don’t even need to clear space for a machine in your kitchen. This one bottle does the job, and then you can take it with you on your commute too. Our writer Jullia was (and continues to be!) enamoured by this when she tried it out. It’s easy to use, and in 8-24 hours, does all the work for you.
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4. Sage Barista Touch Impress with Cold Extraction
If you’re less partial to cold brew and more into espresso on the rocks, allow me to introduce this Sage machine with a whole host of dedicated cold coffee settings. It features auto dosing and extraction and the cold drinks menu is seriously extensive. Our reviewer’s favourite was the cold espresso setting for a divine iced latte at home – there’s even an espresso martini function thrown in too. The only downside? The cool £1,299 pricetag.
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The best iced coffee maker overall
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This De’Longhi machine costs almost £1000, which we know is pretty wild. But, if it’s an at home barista service for iced drinks you’re looking for, the Eletta is faultless. Bean-to-cup coffee machines are ordinarily the most expensive way of making a cup of joe at home, but if you want it, they can give you the highest quality at-home coffee at the touch of a button.
The Eletta Explore takes that idea one step further, with a huge menu of drinks available, as well as a dedicated cold drinks offering. In total, the Eletta Explore offers: ‘Cold Americano, Cold Cappuccino, Cold Cappuccino Mix, Cold Latte Macchiato, Cold CaffeLatte, Cold Flat White and cold brew options.
Our reviewer Helen loved the depth of choice available with iced drinks. The Eletta Explore registers exactly how cold you want your iced drink and then instructs you on exactly how many ice cubes you should add to your cup. Helen also noted that rather than just hot coffee pouring over ice, the brew technology of this machine means that the brew process is actually formulating an iced drink.
Helen found cold drinks as easy to make as hot drinks, and the overall set up and use of this machine couldn’t be easier, too. For cold cups of coffee, it’s the superstar buy you need.
Read our De’Longhi Eletta Explore review for the full details.
Best budget iced coffee maker
This is a basic filter coffee machine (featuring a reusable filter basket), which also comes with a double-walled iced coffee cup. Pop that under the machine’s spout and fill it with ice, and you’ve got a DIY iced coffee at home. It’s a very simple machine, with no frills compared to the decadence of the Eletta Explore, but for those looking for a bargain, it’ll fill an iced-cappuccino-shaped hole.
There’s no special brew process at work here to craft cold brews. Instead, the hot coffee will be going over ice, so you need to make sure there’s plenty of it in the cup below. There’s also no capacity for milk frothing, so you’ll need to do that separately too.
I did find throughout testing this buy that it tended to be a little leaky after dispensing coffee. Despite that, though it’s a budget option, I really love the included cup that comes with this machine, and think that it’s a great standalone buy.
Best cold brew iced coffee maker
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This cold brew cup from one of our favourite coffee brands GRIND helped our writer Jullia to kick her takeaway coffee habit for good. At £30, it’s a perfect inexpensive buy if it’s specifically cold brew coffee you’re after.
To operate it, you add your ground coffee and water to the bottle the night before you want a cup, or up to 24 hours beforehand. Then, pop it into the fridge so that it can steep overnight, and wake up to a delicious cold brew to enjoy on the go. It has a huge 1 litre capacity too, so there’s cold brew enough for your entire household.
Our tester Jullia loved how easy to use this gadget was, and with no need to make space for a coffee machine on your worktop, it’s a gem for small kitchens too.
Read our GRIND Cold Brew Bottle write up for the full details.
The best iced coffee maker for cold espresso
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If your love of cold coffee really is all consuming and you have the budget to match your passion, then you can’t really look past the quality of this Sage machine. Kitted out with a huge range of features for cold brew and cold espresso, it really impressed our reviewer during our testing process.
She found the dedicated auto-dosing and extraction features went a long way to improve the taste of her coffees, as well as the adjustable temperatures for steaming milk. The cold milk options are particularly noteworthy for anyone wanting to make an iced cappucino or latte, with 8 different texture levels to choose from.
This is a seriously premium machine with a price-tag to match, but if you’re looking for a machine to give you the kind of calibre of iced drinks that you can find in a coffee shop, it’s a runaway winner.
Read our full Sage Barista Touch Impress with Cold Extraction review for the full details.
How we tested these iced coffee makers
Here at Ideal Home, we’re passionate about thoroughly reviewing the products we recommend to you as per our coffee machine testing protocol. We’re also a team that’s big on iced coffee, which is why you’ll see this list is curated of products tested by different members of the team. Regardless of who tested each product, each iced coffee maker has been put through its paces at the home of each reviewer, with each person looking for the product to fulfill a set criteria.
That includes ease of use, smoothness of set up, the quality of parts and the resulting coffee, and considerations on value too. With all of that considered, we’ve settled on the rankings above. To see more on how we tested these iced coffee must-haves, take a look at our testing gallery below.
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So now you’ve got the low down on all of the best iced coffee makers that have our seal of approval, the only thing left to do is decide which one is right for you. And start stockpiling ice cubes, of course.
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