Coffee Lemonade (Sweet and Refreshing)

Sweet, refreshing and caffeinated: the only way to not fall in love with this Coffee Lemonade is not to drink this perfection.

The first time I tried it I was still living in Brazil. It was a hot sunny day (as most of the days are over there) and iced coffee was not yet a thing in São Paulo. So imagine my delight when I found a drink with both coffee AND ice just when I was about to melt.

Feeling daring, I just ordered without really paying much attention to any of the ingredients on it and just like that, I met the drink I wanted to have until my death bed. Really, it was that good. Happiness was complete when I discovered it was super easy to reproduce it at home.

I have to confess one thing: I was a coffee purist until that day. I would not have ordered that drink had I noticed it was sweetened: back in 2015, I always had my coffee black. Nowadays I still do, most of the time. But I can say this coffee lemonade made me a better person. Expanded my horizons. Made me drink a mixture of citrus and coffee and honey and fall in love with it forever.

And if I still haven’t convinced you, keep reading. There’s still hope.

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Coffee Lemonade Origin

If you google it, you’ll find that a drink called Mazagran is the first one registered to have iced coffee. Mazagran was the name of an Algerian fortress where French soldiers used to drink iced coffee - some say with rum, some say with sugar syrup - to stay awake and freshen up during the war.

With the war over, the drink named after the fortress became kind of popular in France and throughout Europe, each place with an unique preparation method. After some time, Mazagran recipes started to appear including lemon zest on its ingredients, and thanks to that, you’re about to make the best lemonade ever for a coffee addict.

What is coffee lemonade?

As the name says, coffee lemonade is a mixture of iced coffee and well, usually, lemonade. But this recipe asks for more than two ingredients.

First, instead of using only lemons, I mix both orange and lemon juice in my drink. Second, I replaced the usual sugar with sweet and delicious honey. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: what the actual eff? It must taste like-

Like the best way to wake up on a hot summer morning. Like the best drink ever to have after brunch, or in the middle of a sunny afternoon where all you want is a cold drink that can refresh you and keep you awake at the same time.

How to make it

You just have to mix all the ingredients and that’s it. It can’t get easier than that, believe me. Let me just make a few observations here.

• Orange juice: although I love mine with lots of pulp, I find this drink more pleasant with little to no pulp at all. If you only have it with pulp, or are getting it fresh from the fruit, you can strain it.
• Coffee: for this recipe I prefer using cold brew coffee (I always have some in my fridge on summer days), but that french press you’ve left unfinished in the morning works just as fine. If you want it more caffeinated, you can use shots of espresso as well.
• Lemon juice: always use fresh lemon juice. Bottled lemon juice makes coffee lemonade taste a bit off.

And if all that still haven’t convinced you to try this, I hope my last resort will: watch the video below to see what you're missing.

Feeling super daring? You can adapt this recipe using my blood orange lemonade! Just use coffee instead of water. I got lucky and found some blood oranges last week. The combination above was the end of almost every one of them.