Cold brew — Recipes — CoffeeSpecs

Name: Cold brew
Total time: 480 min
Yield: 4
Ingredients: 55 g Ground coffee; 700 g Cold water

Parameters

Ground coffee: 55 g
Water: 700 g
Ratio: 1:12,7
Total time: 8 h

Grind: Medium-fine according to the source. That is finer than most people expect: what compensates is not the grind, it is the time.

Served in: Tall glass with ice

Coffee and water scale together. The eight hours do not: it is cold steep time and does not depend on quantity.

Ingredients

55 g Ground coffee — Medium-fine grind
700 g Cold water — Straight from the tap

Method

Fill the strainer

Put the grounds in the basket strainer and attach it to the mouth of the bottle.
Pour the water

Pour the cold water through the opening, wetting all the coffee.
Shake and store

Shake gently so the grounds are evenly wet, then put it in the fridge.
Eight hours

Leave it to steep for eight hours. Shake again before serving, then remove the strainer.

Common mistakes

Watery → less than eight hours, or too coarse a grind. Time is the parameter, not the dose.
Cloudy and heavy → grind too fine: the filter does not hold back the finest particles.
It keeps a few days refrigerated and always strained: leaving the grounds in continues the extraction.
Do not confuse it with Japanese iced coffee, which is brewed hot straight onto ice and drunk three minutes later.

Cold brew is not cold coffee: it is coffee extracted cold. Cold water dissolves fewer acids and fewer bitter compounds, and to reach a full drink it needs hours instead of minutes.

The result is sweeter and less acidic than any chilled version of a hot coffee — and indeed you cannot get there by putting an espresso in the fridge. It is a different drink, not the same one at a different temperature.