Cold Brew Coffee

When I first heard about cold brew coffee, I was really skeptical about it. But with time I have found out that it is not as ridiculous as it sounds.

So how does this cold brewing work then?

Well, it's pretty simple - you just mix ground coffee with water, leave it stand for about 12 hours and then you filter it to remove the grounds. This produces concentrated solution that you can store in the fridge for about 2 weeks. When you want a cup of coffee, you just pour some of the concentrate into you cup and dilute it with hot water.

Cold Brewers

You don't really need a cold brew coffee maker. You can make the concentrate for example in a French press. But it may be convenient to have a cold brewer. There are not many around - only Toddy and Filtron as far as I know. I don't know that much about the Filtron system, but you may want to read my page about Toddy cold brew coffee maker.

The characteristic of the cold brewed coffee

It contains considerably less acid than ordinary coffee. This is very good for people with heartburn or with stomach problems.

There is less caffeine. So it is good for people who need to keep their caffeine low.

The taste is quite different than what you are used to from other brewing methods. The cold method extracts less coffee oils than for example French press - so some people will find the coffee too weak and dull. If you drink mainly drip coffee made with paper filters you are unlikely to mind the taste.

Dark roasts work better than light milder flavor coffee. You may want to try something like French or Italian roast. Sumatra works well too.

If you like your coffee really hot you can microwave it after you dilute it.

Iced coffee

The cold brew concentrate is very convenient when you are into iced coffee. In fact some coffee houses (for example Seattle's Best Coffee) use cold brewed coffee concentrate to make some of their iced coffee drinks.

My favorite tip: you can freeze some of the concentrate into ice cubes. Then you serve ice coffee with a mixture of ordinary ice cubes and the dark coffee concentrate ice cubes. It looks cool! Plus the iced coffee does not get diluted as the ice melts.