Cold brew coffee

Epicurean Exploits - Food and Recipes
41

i asked him - he said no dice.

42

How so? It’s a quote from eRP?

43

I know cold-brewing coffee has been done for a while, but I’ve been hearing about it from multiple sources recently so I decided to give it a whirl. The theory says, by brewing with room-temp water for an extended period of time, a different group of chemicals are released by the grounds, giving a more complex and fruity array of flavors, lower acidity and less bitter compounds. A couple sources:

I decided to skip the mint in the slate recipe, since I didn’t want anything to obscure the flavor of the coffee. Following advice for an African bean with medium to light roast, I found a medium-roasted Ethiopian whole bean coffee at WF. I ground 150g (1/3 lb) of beans medium/fine in my burr grinder, which following the 1:4 weight ratio of beans to water, fit nicely into my medium sized French press with 600g of water. Stir once, let sit 10 minutes, stir again, then cover at room temp for approx 24 hours.

I was leery of putting a fine grind in the French press, since this can gunk up the filter, but the ATK article said you must use a fine grind, so I did. This made it very difficult to press the coffee off the grounds. After pressing, I ran the coffee through a paper coffee filter. This yielded just over a cup of very thick concentrate, which I moved to the fridge.

This morning I made a cup by diluting 1/3 cup of the concentrate with 2/3 cup skim milk, added about another cup of ice, from the ATK recipe, a pinch of salt, and after tasting, a pinch of sugar. This can of course be heated for those who don’t like iced coffee.

This was a lot of work compared to my typical shot of espresso in the morning, but the layers of flavor are revelatory. Lots of dark berry flavors, roasted cacao, bitter dark chocolate… very much reminiscent of a fruity dark chocolate like Scharffenberger. I didn’t time the finish but it lingers on the tongue for a while, where the roasted flavors become more apparent. This probably isn’t a pure medium roast since there are surely lots of oils from espresso-roasted beans in my burr grinder that made it into here.

Definitely a worthwhile experiment for anybody who might tend to geek out on coffee.

44

Nice post Larry.

I saw the original post in Slate and it spurred me to make iced coffee but I did not try the cold-brewed. Looks like I’ll get to it this weekend.

45

I had a Kyoto ice coffee at the weekend and it was really good.

46

I’ve never tried this, so I just made a small test batch for tomorrow. I can’t fathom, however, a recipe that needs 1/2 a pound of coffee beans for TWO cups of coffee!!

47

I doubt I’ll ever go to the trouble but I admire geekiness in all its forms. Well done!

48

Some discussion here:

From what I remember, the consistency was a little odd to me – almost a pudding like quality. I haven’t made it again since the discussion in the original thread.

49

For me it looks like it will shake out to 1/3# for 3 cups, over ice that’s literally 2 cups per cup, so I guess you could call it 6.

Out of curiosity, I googled “how many cups from a pound of coffee” and various sources put it at 30-40 and up to 64 [scratch.gif] That’s some weak-ass coffee if you ask me.

50

Thanks Tim. Should have searched it first.

51

“The theory says, by brewing with room-temp water for an extended period of time, a different group of chemicals are released by the grounds, giving a more complex and fruity array of flavors, lower acidity and less bitter compounds.”

So, basically, it’s the Metodo De Grazia applied to coffee instead of Barolo?

52

A few months ago I had a thought: what if you mixed hot brewed coffee and cold brewed coffee (heated) together? Then you’d have a lot more flavors, textures, aromas.

Never followed through on it.

53

Tim to your point I do an iced cold brew red eye: iced cold brew with a fresh espresso shot. Mad flavor, breh

54

Thank you for this thread. I put a small batch together yesterday (enough for one good sized, undiluted glass) and loved it. It’s finally hot in SoCal so it was the perfect start to the day, and I’m amazed how smooth and NOT bitter it is, particularly the aftertaste. I’m sold and just made another batch.

55

[cheers.gif]

My 2nd cup from the first batch is not as expressive as I remember yesterday’s, but honestly I could have been more diligent about how I stored this stuff. Maybe try to vacuum-pack individual servings. I have enough for one more cup, but probably whip up another batch today since the forecast for us is triple digits for the next few days.

56

Maybe you need one of those Platypus things to store it newhere

57

That is reminiscent of an IV drip; probably appropriate:

58

cold brew coffee stays pretty fresh in the fridge for a while - like a week no problem. i keep mine in a mason jar. the coffee i mean.

59

I’ve been doing this for several years now.
Living in the south, I literally don’t do hot coffee from May-Sep.
This is helpful: http://toddycafe.com/

I often do it Vietnamese-style mixed with sweetened evaporated milk.

60

I’m considering trying it with sweetened evaporated milk - sounds awesome.

Today’s brew was better than yesterday’s - stronger. Best part is that you get this very strong coffee without any bitterness.