Make Cold Brew Coffee With Me
Or, MCBCWM as the TikTok kids might say.
I love cold brew coffee for its simplicity, and for how quick it is to get a coffee in the morning. When we're at my in-laws, we buy the stuff from the store because we don't have access to a proper coffee brewer. On our most recent trip I picked up a cold brew jug that has a handy infuser in the middle, so all you do is fill it up with coffee, put it in water, and stick it in the fridge. Good to go.
At home, however, we haven't gotten that far yet. I've tried a few different options in the past, including making cold brew coffee in a French Press; I wasn't fully satisfied with that process, though at the time I think that was because I found too much sediment and grinds in the resulting cold brew. After a few experiments with the aforementioned cold brew jug, and my latest experiment (more on that in a second), it seems that a bit of sediment is inescapable. How do the coffee shops do it so perfectly?
1st Attempt
I mentioned a mason jar in the last paragraph - that's what I'm trying now. Sunday night I dumped the remainder of a bag of coffee I had in the freezer, and filled it with water. Unfortunately I don't know how much water this jar contains. I'll estimate 500mL, maybe? I did not measure how much coffee went into the jar, but I would estimate at least 1.5 tablespoons, maybe 2. The result was not bad! The coffee wasn't very strong but it wasn't weak either. When I put the jar in the fridge, the coffee/water mixture appeared to be dark enough that it looked like coffee.
Oh, and to strain the grinds I used cheesecloth that I had purchased a long time ago and never used.
Result: Pass
2nd Attempt
This one was put together Monday evening. This time I decided to follow a guide from Starbucks. I figured...I was going to use some SB Blonde Roast grinds, so why not follow Starbucks' direction? Their suggestion was 20g:180ml coffee:water ratio. That's about 4 tablespoons for a cup. I weighed the water on my kitchen scale1, and roughly calculated that for the amount of water I added2, I needed ~40 grams of coffee. I mixed everything together, topped the jar with cheesecloth, popped it into the fridge.
This morning, the coffee would barely pour out of the jar through the cheesecloth. Simply put, there was too much coffee. That was confirmed when I drank the coffee - I liked it okay, but it was far too strong for its own good.
Result: Fail
3rd Attempt
I have some Maxwell House Keurig Cups for our Keurig 2.0 brewer. This is the system that basically has Digital Rights Management - you can only use "authorized" cups. I think they need to have some sort of white ring around them. The Maxwell House cups are supposedly official K-Cups, but I am frequently running into the problem of the machine not recognizing them as proper K-Cups. Rather than throw these out, I put them in a ziplock bag and tossed them into the freezer with my other coffee grinds.
For this attempt, as coffee pods are ostensibly pre-portioned for up to 10 ounces of coffee, this should work perfectly. I ended up putting in roughly 14 ounces - it's probably not going to make a big difference in the long run. I've used a single coffee pod to brew 16 ounces before, this will be fine.
The morning after, it pours out of the jar, through the cheesecloth, just fine! No holdups, no clumping. I made a mug half water / half coffee, and it turned out okay! It's weaker than the 2nd attempt but I think it's on part with the first attempt. I would probably add more coffee than water next time, but I would say this will work in the future.
Result: Pass
I haven't reached the "perfect cold brew" level yet but 2 out of 3 attempts were successful, so that's a good start. I need to try a properly-measured cold brew with actual grinds, instead of a K-cup. That's the next step, but that might wait until sometime in the future. I will surely share my results if I end up making the Perfect Cold Brew.
Addendum
One thing I missed through all of this was this important line at the end of the Starbucks guide to mason jar cold brew coffee:
Pour one part concentrate with one part water into a glass with fresh ice ...
So, uh...woops? Still, this doesn't change the results of my experiments because it was mainly about getting the coffee-to-water ratio correct for proper pouring.