Toddy Coffee Maker

Toddy is one of very few systems for producing cold brew coffee. It has been around since 1964.

One advantage of the Toddy system is convenience. You make the coffee concentrate only once every 2 weeks. Once you have the concentrate you just dilute it with hot water or milk and that's it. And it's extremely convenient for making iced coffee drinks.

The system is easy to use. You can read how to use the Toddy coffee maker on the Toddy website.

So, what's the coffee like?

As with all cold brewing systems, the coffee made in Toddy is quite different than the coffee make by hot brewing. Here are some of the main differences.

Toddy made coffee has only about 1/3 of acidic compounds compared to drip brewed coffee. This is brilliant if you have problems with heartburn. Coffee made in the Toddy coffee maker is much less likely to cause heartburn than regular coffee.

The caffeine content is about 2/3 of the amount usually found in hot brewed coffee. That's a good news too, if you are trying to limit your daily caffeine intake.

The coffee feels very smooth and fresh. There is no acidic or bitter taste. Some people love it and would cringe whenever they have to drink hot brewed coffee. Some people take some time to get used to the taste. And some people find the taste too weak.

Some tips

Use good quality freshly ground coffee. Dark roasts work the best. It's best to use coarsely ground coffee.

It's best to brew the whole pound of coffee. You can use less if you need to, but try to use at least 12oz - the process becomes quite messy if you use less than that.

You can try brewing the coffee for more that 12 hours. If you leave it say for 18 hours then you get more caffeine and more oils into the concentrate.

I would probably not recommend this, but I'll put it here as a matter of interest: Some people suggest that you can reuse the coffee grounds - once you extract the coffee concentrate you apparently just pour water over the used grounds and 12 hours later collect the concentrate again. Each of the two batches will have a different taste.