All I Know

More Than A Serving of Cold Brew Coffee

Towards the end of last summer, I went to Joule, another of Ashley Christensen’s home run eating establishments in Raleigh.  They have all sorts of coffee-based selections.  Overwhelmed, I said to the barkeep, “I like iced coffee, and I like espresso.  What do you suggest?”  He suggested the cold-brew coffee, and said that if I didn’t like it there would be no charge.

It was heaven.  Ice coffee with real flavor.  I ordered a second after polishing off the first.

Now, if Joule was in my neighborhood, or even had something like a drive-through at its downtown location, I probably would have let that suffice.  But the fact is that Joule is in the middle of a downtown block.  I don’t know how you get there without either working downtown or making an outing of it.

So to have that stuff with any regularity, I figured I would have to make it myself.

I Googled up a few solutions [1] and have arrived at one I like .  Pretty soon I was making up really satisfying cold brew,  although there is a bit to be said about it all.  I thought that it would make a poor post for early fall, so, now that Spring and iced-coffee season have arrived, and Starbuck’s is launching their cold brew product , I believe the time is now ripe.  Apologies in advance to my readers that still have two feet of snow on the ground.  Spring really is coming.

SIMPLE:

First,  I get out my crummiest half-gallon pitcher and add 7 cups cold tap water and 2 1/3 (2.333) cups of ground coffee. Second, stir every few hours if possible.  Third, After 24 hours, strain the coffee through a regular coffee filter.  Enjoy the results, which some people regard as concentrate. I do not.

Now, the rest of the story:
    • Coffee:  I use the store-brand of better coffee (HT Traders, specifically.  Buy 2 get 3 free). There are two good reasons to use cheap coffee:  1) because the cheap stuff makes fine cold brew.  2) because you are going to be using a ton of it.  The ratio of coffee to water for the cold brew is over twice what I use for hot coffee.  I really don’t know if expensive coffee makes good cold brew or not– I’m too cheap to find out.

Process:

       In the decanting phase, where you filter your coffee for subsequent use, you start off by pouring your coffee through a regular paper coffee filter, and it’s great at first.  Then, presumably the filter gets blocked, because progress slows to nothing.  If you use a giant filter from the machine at work, it takes a little longer for the screeching halt to arrive, but arrive it does.  At this point your type-A-ness will overcome your type-B-ness, and it will seem logical to take proactive steps to help the process along.  See the next section.

Mess:

        Should anything go other than perfectly as you balance a coffee filter in a seive over a bowl that you are trying to nudge along, you will likely send coffee sludge flying, thus aggravating your significant other, who has rumbling like Mt. St. Helen’s over the counter space lost to the the perma-pitcher and spoon-rest, and is taxed already with the existing coffee stains everywhere,  When it’s finally time to clean it all up, you will be astounded at how nasty and brown kitchen products can get in just 24 hours, and you will be second-guessing the whole enterprise.  But you will press on [2].

Math:

     In the fullness of time, you will have consumed your first batch, and will be faced with doing it all again.  “Golly, that was quick,” you’ll say, thinking that probably someone else may have had a bit of your brew, or maybe you didn’t remember a cup.  The trick is that you are deluded in thinking that you produced 7 cups of cold brew. Guess what: you didn’t.  When you threw out the wet filter and wet coffee grounds, you also threw out 2 whole cups of liquid, leaving you 5 cups of cold brew for your original 7 cups of water.  So your cold brew is a whacking 3.5 times more expensive in coffee than regular hot brew, at least for me.  Still much cheaper than $4 a throw at Starbucks, but comparatively costly enough to give pause.
The end product is said to be less acidic and have other qualities I will leave you to research elsewhere.  What is clear is that you will have a much more reliable and satisfying product than can be procured at most coffee outlets.
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[1] I found a subsequently lost a charming article that provided a taxonomy of iced coffee types, which I attempt to recount:  Diner style, which is simply yesterday’s brewed coffee served over ice today, American (?) style, where coffee is brewed strong then cooled and served over ice, Japanese style, in which coffee is brewed strong directly onto ice, and cold brew.
[2] coffee humor.

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