Your Best Cold Brew Ever

Yes, you can make delicious cold brew coffee that tastes like a barista made it in a coffee shop - and the best part is that cold brew is more simple than it may seem! No matter your coffee recipe or brewing method, there are a few rules. First, use filtered water, it will make your coffee taste delicious. Second, grind your coffee coarse, think: the size of cracked pepper. Use room temperature or cold water. Lastly, don’t pour leftover coffee over ice, cold brew tastes better with fresh coffee.

While you can use most coffee beans in the cold brewing process, our favorite cold brew coffee beans are characterized by body and sweetness. Also, since cold brew isn't able to extract many of the acids found in hot coffee, it's best to make cold brew with coffee that's not focused on its acidity. After picking the best cold brew coffee beans, the cold brewing process involves submerging the coffee completely in water. To do so, you can use a large French press, tupperware container, or mason jar as your makeshift cold brew coffee maker. Just make sure that the brewed coffee is covered to avoid contact with oxygen.

Cold brew concentrate is the strong, condensed version of ready-to-drink cold brew. This coffee concentrate is achieved by using a closer ratio of coffee to water. By controlling the coffee recipe, you also control how much water you use with your coffee grounds and which flavor notes are pulled out. I generally like to use a 1:5 coffee to water ratio and play from there. This cold brew coffee ratio tastes delicious over ice; keep in mind that the ice cubes will dilute the cold brew when they melt. You can also fill our Cold Brew Bags with 3 oz of coffee to about 28 oz of water for a strong cold brew and dilute the coffee ratio using clean filtered water, cream, or sweet flavors like vanilla or caramel.

Nothing gold can stay, leftover coffee included. Luckily, with the soft extraction of the cold brew process, your coffee concentrate should last up to two weeks in your refrigerator with its most special flavor notes fading in about a week. If you dilute your cold brew coffee concentrate with cold water, expect your cold brew to only last two to three days. Fortunately, there are a number of things you can do with cold brew before then, like iced lattes or cold brew popsicles!

Because the coffee grounds sit in contact with cold water or room temperature water for many hours, your coffee grounds should be coarse, like kosher salt. The larger the grind size, the smoother the cold brew will be. It’s easy to see that when you use a finer grind for your coffee grounds, you create a cloudy and muddy taste in your cold brew. To make it taste clean and delicious, make sure you’re using coffee ground nice and coarse.