Hey, summer, you’re welcome!
Tomorrow we will travel for our seaside vacation and the last week was finally a pretty warm one. We had days with themperatures over 28-30 degrees Centigrade and some cold coffee is always preferred at such a weather.
Not only that, but Mr Dabov has been selling his COLD BREW BLEND with a 15% discount throughout the entire month of June. The final price was about $40 and I split this 1 kg bag with one of my friends.
It is a good practice to keep my old resealable packaging of the specialty coffees, so I can reuse them when I share these 1 kg coffee bags with somebody.
Cood brew coffee is maybe among the easiest to prepare and you don’t need any equipment at all. Compared with the V60, or other filtering method, you can achieve a perfect cup of coffee even without hot water. You only need a bit more time, because cold water extracts coffee flavors much slower. You will need at least 8-12 hours in order to brew your refreshing drink.
You start, of course, with grinding your beans. The grind setting is similar to your filter one. It is not too coarse, like the setting for french press, but it is also not fine, like your espresso coffee grinding. I usually go 2-3 clicks coarser woth my manual grinder, comparing to my V60 profile and I think this just works pretty well.
I start with 40 grams of coffee and then about 500 ml of cold tap water will be added. Mr Dabov suggests 50 grams of coffee with 600 ml of water, but my dose works better with the jars I have at home. Less head room in the jar means limited, or eliminated risk of oxidation. When the water is added, I stir the mixture. We have to make sure that all the coffee particles had met with the water.
Than I put the lid and it is officially a refrigeration time! You have to forget about your coffee now. I usually brew before I go to ber, about 10-11 PM. When I sleep I cannot be curiois about what happens at all. 😁
When I woke up in the early morning the coffee is ready. Time for joy!
Instead of using some fancy cold brewers I only use my filter setup. 1 more jar and one paper filter is what is needed. Filtering the coffee is the last step before achieving the refreshing cup.
About 2-3 minutes are needed at this step. The glass with some ice cubes is already waiting calmly. I usually pour about 40-50 ml of water in order to thin the coffee a bit.
Lighter taste is what I am seeking, but you can enjoy your cold brew coffee as it is, right after the filtration step.
Saturday delight!
But if you don’t have that much time to brew uour cold coffee you can modify the general filter recipe a bit.
Brewing straight over ice will give you some instant cold and refreshing coffee. The usual steps are the same, grinding your beans, then pouring with hot water. With grinding I tend to go a couple of steps finer, because we will use a reduced amount of water to compensate the ice in the jar. This means we will have to extract a bit more of the coffee itself.
I grind about 18 grams of coffee, put about 100 grams of ice cubes which leaves me with about 180-200 ml of hot water for the brewing itself. I use the slower Hario filters and aim at about 2 minutes of brewing time.
And yes… the coffee is ready and waiting! If I want to enjoy it throughout the day, I put two or three more oce cubes then coffee goes into my favorite Japanese thermos. Even after 6 hours I have some little ice particles in the coffee and I can refresh myself when working in these hot afternoons.
For this second type of cold coffee, I really prefer the V60 filtering single origin coffees or blends. The cold brew one has a different setting of roasting, and brewing it with hot water leaves a bit of harshness in the cup. The berries stand out when it is brewed with cold water!
Do you enjoy various cold coffee drinks? I think that preparing some is brilliantly easy and everybody can make some at home.
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One little teaser… This morning I received an early birthday gift, so I will now start experimenting different recipes on it! Excitement is starting to rise quickly!
That’s for now! See you soon, bye!
Wish you a wonderful weekend!