Second Stab at Cold Brew

A while back I tried to make cold brew and the result was undrinkable. I know that some people swear by the results, and since then I’ve had the pleasure of drinking some good cold brew. So I decided last night to attempt it again.

Here’s the process I used:

1. I used a shaker ball cup (with shaker ball) as my vessel.
2. I used 30g of ground coffee.
3. I used 180g of water.
4. I mixed the grounds and coffee and let sit overnight (about 10 hours).
5. I mixed the grounds again and poured into the Aeropress to filter out the grounds from the liquid.

Here’s what I’ve found.

Taste

The taste was good, much sweeter and mellower than my usual cup (almost too sweet, I think I need to cut back on the sugar when I use cold brew). No acidity that I could taste, although there was a bit of an aftertaste I hadn’t noticed when brewing this blend normally. 

Process

The process isn’t bad really, I can do most of the work the night before and have coffee quicker in the morning. On the other hand, it produces twice as many dishes to wash. Making it in larger batches would solve this problem, but it would be a pain to have to deal with the Aeropress in these numbers.

Final Thoughts

I don’t know that I would do this regularly. The coffee was good this time, but my standby method in the Aeropress is good as well. Yes, it has a bit of acidity at times, but I think it brings out more flavors in the beans as well. Also, it uses about half as much coffee as cold brew, and that’s with my 1:6 ratio. Several sites suggested a 1:4 ratio, which means I’d be using 45g of coffee which is three times as much as I use in the Aeropress. To me, using that much coffee simply isn’t worth it.