I have been cold brewing my coffee for about a year now and I was wondering if anybody else did as well. I absolutely love what it does to the flavor signature of the coffee. Not bitter at all with much richer flavors. All of the best things about coffee with none of the bad.
I personally never have. But now that you mention it I may have to try. How do you cold brew your coffee?
Because I am currently a college student with a very low budget, I have a bit of a hack setup at the moment but I will describe my process in general terms.
To Brew the Coffee:
- In a moderately large container, put 1 cup of coffee grounds and add 4 cups of room temperature water (this can be scaled up but keep the ratio the same). Cover and let steep for at least 8 but up to 12 hours overnight. If you let it steep during the day make sure that the sun is not going to be on the container all day. We're not making sun tea here.
- Put a coffee filter in a strainer and pour coffee through it to strain. What you have now is a coffee concentrate. (I have found it useful to strain it once just through the strainer to get all the coffee grounds out before pouring it through the strainer with the coffee filter again. Otherwise, the grounds clog up the filter and it takes much longer.)
To Make a Cup of Coffee:
- Measure 2/3 cup of coffee into preferred drinking container. Add 1/3 cup of water (boiling for hot coffee, cold for iced coffee). Depending on how long you let the coffee steep, you are going to have to adjust the ratios here. I usually steep mine for 12-16 hours and use a 1:1 ratio.
- Enjoy sweet caffeinated success.
I currently use two half-gallon mason jars and make about 6 cups of concentrate at a time. It lasts me about a week.
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How is the taste with that method? Any acidity problems? Does the taste stay true to the beans?
Do you ever have issues with the concentrate starting to mildew before you get around to using it? I imagine that keeping it in a closed mason jar would keep it nice and fresh pretty effectively.
There is virtually no acidity due to the fact that you aren't applying any heat to the grounds. Heat is what extracts most of the acidic and bitter taste in coffee brewed with hot water. And the taste is much better, in my opinion, to coffee brewed from the same beans using a more traditional method with hot water.
I have never had problems with the concentrate going bad. The mason jar does its job quite well. I also keep mine in the refrigerator after I strain it because I almost exclusively make iced coffee.
Pretty interesting stuff, really. I don't ever drink coffee (or hardly anything other than water for the most part), but if I were to try some, I do believe that I would follow this method. Thanks for the info. I previously just took the hot brew method for granted, never really considering other methods.
Never tried this before, but definitely will now.
Tried it, like it. I need to figure out my proportions though. I'm using a ton of concentrate to make what I drink, and I think maybe too much. I'm still used to the acidic taste, so I'm probably making it much stronger than is needed.
You can do the same with tea. I'll typically throw some tea bags into a large jar, fill it with water, and leave it on the counter over night. Take out the bags in the morning and it's good to go.
Nice! I'm glad you tried it! Honestly, the ratio of concentrate to water is a completely personal thing. I usually make mine a bit stronger than the 1:1 ratio I mentioned, something around 2:1 usually, but I like my coffee strong.
That is very cool. I did not know that. I knew about sun tea, where you leave tea bags in a large glass jar in the sun for a while, but it is very cool that you can do cold brew with tea too. I will have to try it sometime.
I don't cold brew my coffee per say, but I make a large, traditional pot of coffee using a standard coffee maker and then simply chill what I have made by putting it in the fridge. Grab a glass, put some ice in it and put in a bit of creamer and the coffee and your golden.
Yeah, that is what I used to do back when I was still living with my parents. Now that I am at college, I don't have access to a coffee machine so I had to find a way to make coffee easily and cheaply. A couple mason jars and a strainer later and I'm good to go. I've been using this setup for about a year now and it works quite well. I also like the taste of the coffee that cold brewing produces better than a traditional coffee maker so it is a win-win in my book.