Blue Bottle replaces espresso shots with cold-extracted Kyoto

Kyoto-style cold-extracted – Blue Bottle Coffee is rolling out Kyoto-style espresso—cold-extracted and brewed with a separate method—so iced drinks don’t suffer from melting-ice dilution or the “smoky and bitter” profile of pouring hot espresso over ice. The chain says the change will pow

For years. Blue Bottle customers have been able to enjoy cold drinks without much compromise—especially its New Orleans-style iced coffee cold brewed with chicory root. But when it came to iced lattes and other espresso-based drinks. the process still carried a stubborn bottleneck: the need to pull hot shots of espresso and then fight the physics of ice.

Now, Blue Bottle is trying to solve that problem at the source. Its CEO, Karl Strovink, tells Fast Company, “We’ve cracked the code on cold espresso.”

The chain—owned by Beijing-based Centurium Capital, majority shareholder in Luckin Coffee—says it is rolling out its Kyoto-style espresso. This cold-extracted espresso will be used across new menu items and all of its cold espresso drinks going forward.

Blue Bottle’s new slate includes eight iced espresso-based drinks. built to deliver a more balanced. coffee-forward iced experience as more customers choose cold over hot. The company also sees a practical upside inside its stores: swapping away from an espresso-machine rush for cold drinks could remove what it calls a café’s biggest bottleneck. while keeping the taste it wants.

Strovink puts it bluntly: “Cold is the new hot in the coffee industry.” He adds that until now, specialty coffee “hasn’t had cold as a protagonist.”

The change is designed to be more than marketing. Unlike espresso pulled hot from a machine and served over ice, the Kyoto-style method won’t get diluted by melting ice—giving Blue Bottle space to let the coffee stand on its own.

For Strovink, that’s the heart of the win. “We’re quietly resolving one of the biggest conflicts in cold espresso-based beverages,” he says. “Hot-drawn espresso over ice produces an inferior product that doesn’t allow the coffee to fully express itself.”

He’s not alone in describing what goes wrong with the old approach. Kevin Thaxton, Blue Bottle’s director of global product development, tells Fast Company: “Hot espresso makes them smoky and bitter. It finishes ashy and not very clean.” Thaxton also says, “The coffee and the milk flavors are not really integrated.”.

That’s the gap Blue Bottle wants to close by balancing ice, milk, and syrup instead of forcing an acrid mix of milk and hot espresso onto an iced menu. Its plan includes new Iced Caffe Lattes and Espresso Tonics designed around that goal.

The flagship addition is the new Shakerato. Blue Bottle describes it as a shot of the Kyoto-style shaken with ice to create some foam, and it’s positioned as the cornerstone of the chain’s menu additions.

A major part of this shift took time in the background. Blue Bottle says the research behind Kyoto-style espresso started when it developed its packaged instant coffee. which it says provided a sense of what cold-extracted. high-concentration flavors could taste like—though it would be difficult to reproduce in a café.

Over the past several years. the company developed Kyoto-style espresso using Blue Bottle’s Hayes Valley Espresso. brewed in a separate machine with cold water and finely ground espresso beans. The beans act as a filter as the water moves through. Without pressure, Blue Bottle says it takes about an hour to brew.

Each store produces it in large batches so it’s ready as customers order.

Thaxton describes how Blue Bottle first tried to build the best iced latte and then started over. “Originally we were trying to design this to make the best iced latte,” he says. “Then we scrapped that and started from zero. We found that you could make a lot of other drinks too.”

One of those drinks is the Espresso Tonic, another cold beverage gaining popularity in cafés. Blue Bottle’s version is not just a shot of espresso with tonic water. The company says its Kyoto-style espresso and a homemade tonic syrup—made with lemongrass and citric acid—are shaken together. then sparkling water is added.

Thaxton says the setup gives the chain control: “This allows us to really control that sweetness and coffee balance because straight tonic water is pretty sweet.” Blue Bottle will also offer seasonal Kyoto-style drinks.

Behind the scenes, Blue Bottle says it’s using the new workflow to help keep lines moving. It expects queues to run more efficiently because the prebatched cold espresso should reduce how often baristas need to pull hot espresso shots from their La Marzocco espresso machines.

Thaxton says the espresso machine isn’t the enemy. “We love the espresso machine. It makes great drinks,” he tells Fast Company. But “when we think about it for cold espresso drinks, in the end, it’s not the best tool.”

That timing matters because the demand signal is already loud.

Strovink says sales of iced drinks in Blue Bottle’s U.S.-based cafés have spiked to about 40%. and in its Korean cafés—where the chain’s 150 stores are split roughly 50/50 between the U.S. and Asia—iced drinks are more than 70% of sales. Blue Bottle executives say the launch of Kyoto-style espresso is timed to that growth, particularly among Gen Z.

Thaxton adds that he doesn’t see the shift as a fad. “This isn’t a recent trend,” he says. “This is a seismic shift in how people in the world are drinking coffee. It deserves its own way of thinking about it.”

Blue Bottle Kyoto-style espresso cold extracted espresso iced coffee La Marzocco Centurium Capital Luckin Coffee Gen Z espresso tonic Shakerato