How to Make Cold Brew Coffee [recipe]

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I am reeeally behind on this, as my acutely scientific research has Cold Brew Coffee hitting major media more than fifteen years ago. However, I never said I was a bleeding edge food trendsetter. Oh, sure, I hear about food fads and trends all the time. I just don't really listen.

My personal introduction to cold brew was in the form of a dark, "stubby" bottle of Stumptown Coffee's Cold Brew only to be found in specialty shops and cafes at the time. Deep, slightly more intense than my usual morning cup of coffee. It was refreshing of course, it was, you know, good, but I didn't find cold brew all that much more extraordinary than just regular old iced coffee. That, of course, says nothing, because I'm a filthy whore for anything brown, bitter, and caffeinated.

What I did find extraordinary about cold brew was the slightly obscene-at-the-time $4.50 price tag for a 10-ounce bottle. Shocked as consumer, awed as businessperson.

The true revelation came when I got home and looked up "cold brew" online. Wow. There was so much information out there.

How had I missed it all? Of course, you could look up just about anything and marvel at how quickly google can return millions of result. Non-acetone nail polish remover for chihuahuas? 1.39 million sites in three-tenths of a second! You know, um, as an example.

It was finding out that cold brew is first and more often, something you make at home, and only very recently a store-bought product, that put the obsession in my head to make it myself.

(Wait. What? Packaged product that actually started at home? Isn't that, like, everything? Even pop tarts?! Yes, you sarcastic little parenthetical.)

What Exactly is Cold Brew?

Cold brewing coffee doesn't require any special skills, ingredients or equipment, not even a coffee maker, though there are products on the market specifically designed for making cold brew at home. About the only thing you need that might be hard to find is — pardon me for a moment while I conjure my inner Axl — patience.

Cold brewing is a process that takes time. I let my cold brew mixture of coffee grounds and room temperature water sit for almost 15 hours before having to pour it first, slowly over a few layers of cheesecloth, then second, even more slowly through a paper coffee filter.

For someone who can barely wait three minutes for the dregs of a paper shredder to "instantly" reconstitute into ramen, the process is excruciating (but obvs, worth it).

Health and Taste of Cold Brew vs. Iced Coffee

So yes, you're probably wondering why someone would choose cold brew coffee over regular iced coffee or vice versa. It comes down to a couple of things: taste and health.

Taste-wise, cold brew coffee has a smoother, rounder taste than regular hot-brewed coffee. The slow steeping process pulls out less of the compounds in the coffee grounds that can make coffee taste acidic or bitter. It's also easier to control the flavor and strength of cold brew by diluting a concentrate with water, than trying to backwards calculate how strong to brew hot coffee so it dilutes to the right strength with ice cubes.

More importantly for some of us though, cold brew is easier on our digestive systems than regular hot brewed coffee. For the same reason the coffees taste different — cold brewing process pulls out fewer of the acidic compounds in coffee grounds — cold brew is less acidic and therefore less irritating to the stomach.

There's a trade-off though. Cold brew extracts less "stuff" from the coffee, which means less acid, but also less of the antioxidant compounds that can make coffee beneficial to our health.

What You Need to Make Cold Brew Coffee

As far as actual ingredients and equipment for cold brew, you do need:

• ground coffee
• filtered water
• large glass containers
• sieve
• cheesecloth, paper coffee filters, or if you really want to MacGyver it, paper towels

How to Make Cold Brew Coffee

Cold brewing boils down to — not literally obviously — only two steps:

• steep coffee grounds with water
• filter cold brew

I had a large enough glass pitcher to hold the coffee grounds and water whilst it cold-brewed, but that was it. To filter, I had to pour the cold brew from that big glass pitcher into several smaller glass containers and then wash the glass pitcher and then pour the filtrate — omg, that dirty word just took me back to AP Chemistry— through a paper filter back into the glass pitcher. I could have used plastic containers I suppose, but I am freaked out by freaky shit in plastics and other weird chemicals.

(Oh, right, not that I didn't sweeten my life with the white powder of hate and drink a 6-pack of Diet Cyanide every day for years).

Cold Brew Coffee Ingredients Resources

Coffee Beans. If you start with whole coffee beans, grind them to a coarse grind. Individual coffee pieces should be about the size of raw sugar granules.

Ground Coffee. However I will always encourage you to go the path of least resistance at first. So go ahead any use pre-ground coffee. Just steep the coffee for a shorter period of time so the cold brew doesn't get too strong. Whatever tf that means. I use organic, Italian roast (very dark).

Water. Use room temperature or cold filtered water.

Ice for Serving. After cold brew has been in the refrigerator, you can drink it straight up. However, something about adding ice to a glass of cold brew makes it taste better. Don't ask me why. Because the cold brew as it's made is a concentrate, you can serve with regular ice, which will melt and dilute the cold brew as you drink it. It's similar to the way a cocktail dilutes over time. If you're just waiting around for your cold-brew to brew and have nothing else to do, freeze coffee into coffee ice cubes to serve with your cold brew. Your cold brew won't dilute and you'll have a consistent taste experience all the way through your glass.

Sweetener. I drink all my coffee, hot, iced, cold-brewed or otherwise, pitch-ass bitter black. However, if you're not quite a replicant like me, use any liquid sweetener to sweeten your cold brew. Granulated sugars and sugar alternatives may not fully dissolve in a cold drink. Agave (plant-based), honey, and simple syrup are all great.

Plant-based milk or regular dairy creamer. Like I said above, black coffee for me. However, if and when I have to use milk or cream, I generally reach for oat milk, which has the heart-health benefits of oats, and also seems to blend into the coffee best.

So I'm a little behind in discovering this. And so I'm so slow to follow the fad that it isn't one anymore. So I'm a little late in the season to bring up something that is usually enjoyed on a patio in the full summer sunshine, but summer in LA lasts until October and sunshine lasts...? Forever.

Now, have you heard about these tiny versions of cakes called "cupcakes?"