Witches Brew Iced Coffee | Skeleton Brew Coffee

Witches Brew Iced Coffee

A caramel-sweetened cold brew over ice with a creamy almond-milk swirl and a licorice stirrer for stirring, well, whatever needs stirring.

Some drinks announce themselves. Witches Brew just sits there in the glass, dark and calm, waiting for you to take the first sip — at which point caramel, smooth cold brew, and almond milk all agree that you made an excellent decision.

This is the rare iced coffee that requires zero special equipment. Cold brew forgives almost everything: it's low-acid, naturally sweet, and stays smooth even after a night in the fridge. If you have a jar, ground coffee, and a little patience, you already own a cold brew setup. (A dedicated cold brew maker just makes the cleanup nicer.)

The featured coffee is our Bone Chilled, a cold brew blend made for exactly this kind of situation. Make a batch Sunday night, and this recipe becomes a two-minute drink all week.

What You'll Need

Ingredients

  • 60 g Bone Chilled coffee, coarsely ground
    • About 6 heaping tablespoons coarsely ground coffee if you don't have a scale
  • 480 ml / 16 oz cold or room-temperature water, for the cold brew
  • 240 ml / 8 oz cold brew coffee (from the batch above)
  • 2 tablespoons caramel syrup (about 30 ml; see directions for a quick homemade version)
    • Or 2 tablespoons caramel sauce, thinned with 1 teaspoon very hot water
  • 120 ml / 4 oz unsweetened almond milk, cold
  • Plenty of ice cubes
  • Whipped cream, for topping
  • 1 black licorice stick, for stirring (optional, but strongly encouraged)

Equipment

  • Large jar or French press for cold brewing
  • Fine mesh strainer, paper filter, or coffee filter
  • Tall glass
  • Spoon

Grind coarse. Cold brew grounds should look like coarse breadcrumbs, not powder. Fine grounds make muddy, bitter concentrate that no amount of almond milk can rescue.

Coffee Ratio

For the cold brew base:

60 g coffee : 480 ml water

That's approximately a 1:8 coffee-to-water ratio — a concentrate, not a finished drink. You'll dilute it with ice and milk in the glass. Don't worry, it balances out.

Household equivalent:

About 6 heaping tablespoons ground coffee : 16 oz water

This strong base is deliberate: melting ice waters everything down, and a concentrate built for that moment tastes better than regular coffee poured over cubes.

Directions

1. Start the Potion the Night Before

Combine 60 g coarsely ground Bone Chilled with 480 ml (16 oz) cold or room-temperature water in a jar. Stir to make sure every ground is wet. Cover and steep 12–16 hours at room temperature or in the refrigerator. Longer steeping extracts more flavor; past about 18 hours, start heading toward bitterness.

2. Strain the Spirits

Strain the brew through a fine mesh strainer, then through a paper filter if you want it perfectly clean. This yields roughly 400 ml of concentrate — enough for two drinks. Refrigerate until cold.

3. Make It Easy on the Caramel

In your serving glass, combine 240 ml (8 oz) cold brew concentrate with 2 tablespoons caramel syrup. Stir until fully blended. (Using bottled caramel sauce? Stir it with 1 teaspoon of very hot water first, then add it — caramel sauce simply declines to dissolve in cold liquid.)

4. Raise the Milky Veil

Add 120 ml (4 oz) cold almond milk and stir gently. Don't chase a perfect marble swirl — you're making an iced coffee, not a chemistry demonstration. It'll look good anyway.

5. Enter the Icy Realm

Fill your tallest glass generously with ice. Yes, to the brim — more ice means slower melting and less dilution.

6. Pour Over the Ice

Pour the coffee mixture over the ice, leaving a little room at the top for the whipped cream. Watch the layers settle on their own.

7. Crown and Stir

Top with a generous swirl of whipped cream, then add the black licorice stick as a stirrer. The skeletons won't judge you for eating it afterward.

Skeleton Brew Tip

Sweeten for the ice, not the glass.

Cold liquid mutes sweetness — flavors simply register less when they're cold. That's why this recipe mixes the caramel into the concentrate before the ice goes in, while there are still fewer things fighting for attention in the glass.

And note that we use a syrup, not a sauce. Granulated sugar and thick sauces don't dissolve in cold drinks; syrups do. Any sweetener you plan to use in an iced drink should arrive in liquid form — simple syrup, caramel syrup, honey stirred into a splash of hot water — or it will pool at the bottom of the glass like a sugary sediment layer.

Make It Your Own

  • Bare Bones: Skip the whipped cream and licorice. Still excellent.
  • Extra Strong: Use 300 ml of concentrate and let the ice dilute it down.
  • Dairy-Free: You're already nearly there — swap in oat milk for a rounder, creamier body, or skip milk entirely.
  • Coffee Ice Cubes: Freeze leftover cold brew in an ice tray. Zero dilution, full flavor.
  • Salted Shadow: Add a pinch of flaky salt to the caramel syrup for salted caramel depth.
  • Vanilla Hex: Swap the caramel for vanilla simple syrup, or use half of each.
  • Mocha Brew: Add 1 tablespoon chocolate syrup along with the caramel for a caramel-mocha situation.
  • Hot Brew Emergency: No cold brew? Brew hot coffee at double strength (32 g per 480 ml water), refrigerate it until fully chilled, and proceed. Different, not worse.

Why It Works

Cold brew is brewed with time instead of heat, so it extracts fewer of the harsh, acidic compounds that hot water pulls out. The result is a naturally smooth base that stands up to caramel and milk without turning bitter — and it's already cold, so the ice barely has to work.

Brewing at a 1:8 concentrate ratio means the drink arrives at full strength after the ice melts, rather than at half-strength. The almond milk adds body and just enough sweetness to round out the caramel, while the whipped cream on top gives you that first-sip contrast: cold coffee underneath, cool cream on top.

Recommended Brew

Bone Chilled

This recipe was built around Bone Chilled, our cold brew blend, and honestly the two are inseparable. As a cold brew concentrate it comes through smooth and full-bodied, which is exactly what you want when caramel and almond milk join the party — a lighter or brighter coffee would get lost. It also works beautifully hot-brewed at double strength for the emergency version above.

Explore Bone Chilled

Want something to eat with it? Explore our Bone Chilled Coffee & Food Pairings.

From the Coffee Corner

This recipe is a quiet argument that the best iced coffee you can buy is the one you made last night. Cold brew is nearly impossible to mess up, it keeps for about two weeks in the fridge, and one Sunday-evening batch covers a week of drinks. The techniques here — brewing a concentrate, sweetening with syrup instead of sugar, compensating for ice dilution — all transfer directly to every other iced drink in your future.

Continue exploring:

Recipe at a Glance

Coffee 60 g / about 6 heaping tablespoons, coarsely ground
Water (for cold brew) 480 ml / 16 oz
Coffee Ratio 1:8 concentrate
Steep Time 12–16 hours
Cold Brew per Serving 240 ml / 8 oz
Milk 120 ml / 4 oz unsweetened almond milk
Sweetener 2 tablespoons caramel syrup
Ice Glass filled to the brim
Yield 2 servings of concentrate; 1 drink per batch of 240 ml (plus concentrate left over)
Difficulty Easy (advance planning required)
Equipment Jar or French press, strainer/filter, tall glass

Skip the coffee shop. Make something better at home.

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