Cold brew – either you love it or hate it. But when you do love it, you drink it almost daily, and maybe more than one cup a day.
This refreshing drink packs a punch, and for a good reason: the method that is used to brew it extracts a lot of caffeine.
The most commonly used process is simple: you take coarsely ground coffee, room temperature (or cold) water, and immerse the coffee in it for 12-18 hours. You remove the coffee grinds, and there you have it… you have cold brew that will be good to drink for the next two weeks (if you don’t finish it sooner).
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What you need
- Coffee of your choice. If you have a grinder, choose a coarse setting and start there. It may take a few tries to get the cold brew to your preferred taste (bolder flavor or not), but the rule of thumb for cold brew is coarse is better. If you’re a visual person, the grinds should look somewhere between coarse sea salt and ground peppercorns.
- Water: Make sure it’s filtered and not hot. I use room temperature water.
- Brewer: There are a bunch of cold brew brewers out there, like the Toddy, or this one, which is what I use at home. But if you’re not ready to invest in one, you can use a large french press (the press acts like a filter) or a mason jar, in which case you’ll have to figure out a way to filter out the coffee… you can use a cheesecloth, a colander, or even a regular coffee filter – they all work just fine.
The Recipe
- This will vary based on the size of brewer you’re using, but a good starting point is 1:16 ratio. Basically you just take the grams of coffee and multiply it by 16 to get how much water you should use. So, if you’re using 25 grams of coffee, you would use 400 grams of water. I use 62 grams of coffee and 1000g of water.
Directions
- Grind your coffee. If you don’t have a grinder, buy a bag from your local coffee shop and ask them to grind it for you for cold brew.
- Add room temperature filtered water to your coffee in your brewer
- Stir it, to make sure all grinds are saturated
- Put it in your fridge and set a reminder for you to take out the grinds in 12-18 hours
- Write down your exact recipe in a notebook or your note app in your phone so that you can reproduce it next time, or adjust it if you want to improve it. Remember, this is an experiment, and there are a lot of variables that will change the result, so the best way to get good at making cold brew at home is to do it a lot! Things to note:
- Grind Size
- Coffee: origin (what country is it from) and date when coffee was roasted
- Coffee amount in grams
- Water amount in grams
- Brewing time
- Result: Was it too light, too strong, just right?
Adjustments
- If your cold brew isn’t quite where you want it to be, start adjusting the variables (all of the things in the list of important notes to keep are variables). I suggest you only adjust one variable at a time, so you can have a more controlled experiment. What I normally adjust first though, is the steep time:
- I start out removing the grinds at 12 hours and tasting it, if it’s not flavorful enough, I’ll let it go all the way to 18 hours. I don’t usually go past the 18 hour mark but that’s personal preference.
My next step is grind size:
- If my cold brew is too light (tastes watered down), I will go with a finer grind size
- If my cold brew is too strong, I will go with a coarser grind size
Final thoughts
- The more you make cold brew at home, the better you get at it. You don’t have to do big batches if budget is a concern. Start with a mason jar! It is a long process in terms of having to wait 12 hours or more for it to be finished, but it’s worth it once you start getting to the sweet spot. Have patience, and enjoy the process! This could be a good way to also find out what your favorite type of coffee is.
- A quick starter point of coffee “flavors:”
- Origins:
- African coffees: They tend to be more fruit-forward
- Central and Latin American coffee: They tend to be more chocolaty and nutty
- Process:
- Washed coffees: More stable and easier to work with.
- Natural coffees: A bit more temperamental, and yield a more funky flavor.
- Origins:
- Here’s a list of other tools for making great coffee at home!
If you make your own cold brew at home following this guideline, let me know. Or DM me on Insta if you have any questions!
