How to Make Cold Brew That's Better Than the Stuff You Buy

Cold brew is the easiest coffee you will ever make, and the markup at Starbucks is criminal. A bottle of their cold brew runs around five dollars. You can make a full batch at home for roughly the cost of the beans, which comes out to maybe fifty cents a glass. All you need is coarsely ground coffee, water, time, and a container.

The ratio is simple. One cup of coarsely ground coffee to four cups of cold filtered water for a concentrate, or one to eight for ready-to-drink strength. Use a good medium to dark roast. Counter Culture Hologram or Stumptown Hair Bender both work beautifully. Grind it yourself if you can. A Baratza Encore grinder set to the coarsest setting produces the ideal particle size.

Do not buy a cold brew machine. A Hario Mizudashi bottle is about £20 for a litre with a filter built in, a Toddy system runs around $50, and a Kilner jar with a sieve costs nothing and works identically. The only kit worth real money is the grinder, because a blade grinder makes dust that turns to sludge however carefully you filter.

Combine the grounds and water in a large mason jar or a French press. Stir once to make sure all the grounds are saturated, then cover and refrigerate for twelve to eighteen hours. Do not go past twenty-four hours unless you enjoy drinking something that tastes like battery acid mixed with regret.

One extra step separates home cold brew from the bottled stuff: filter it twice. After the sieve, run it through a paper filter in a V60 or a Chemex. It takes twenty minutes of dripping and pulls out the fines and oils that make cold brew taste muddy by day three. The liquid goes from opaque to almost tea-clear, and it keeps better in the fridge.

Strain through a fine mesh sieve lined with cheesecloth, or just press the plunger on your French press. If you made a concentrate, dilute it one-to-one with water or milk. The result is smooth, naturally sweet, and significantly less acidic than hot-brewed coffee. That low acidity is why cold brew converts people who normally load their coffee with sugar.

Cold brew is not always the right call. Low extraction of acids is what makes it smooth, and it also strips out the fruit and florals you paid for in a good Ethiopian. If you have bought something bright, make Japanese iced coffee instead: brew hot at your usual dose, but put about 40 per cent of the water in the carafe as ice so it chills the instant it lands. Ten minutes, and the aromatics survive.

Store it in a sealed container in the fridge for up to two weeks. Make a big batch on Sunday night and you have coffee for the entire week without touching a machine. Add a splash of oat milk from Oatly, a pump of vanilla syrup, or drink it black. You will never stand in that drive-through line again.

Skip nitro at home. Bottled nitro is charged with nitrogen, while the whipper in your cupboard takes nitrous oxide, a different gas that gives a sweet dissolving foam rather than a cascade.

https://www.counterculturecoffee.com/learn/cold-brew-guide