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Cold brew coffee is great, especially for things like coffee tonics where you want to let other flavors shine. There are lots of ways you could go about making cold brew -- like with any other kind of coffee we're just playing with variations on the following:

  • Coffee bean roast, freshness, and quality
  • Coarseness of the grind
  • Water temperature
  • Brew duration
  • Filtration method

There's no correct combination of those factors, but you'll definitely get different results when you vary any of them! Personally, I optimize for simplicity of the process. In general, you can get great results no matter what you do if you start with really good coffee.

Here's how I make my cold brew:

Equipment

Two mason jars with metal tea-infusers inside.

  • A food-safe, coverable container (like a mason jar)
  • A tea infuser big enough to hold your grounds (with holes small enough to trap the grit). Fine-mesh tea infusers will give you less grit, but really any infuser will do. A little grit builds character
  • A coffee grinder (or pre-ground coffee)

I use pint or quart mason jar, and an appropriately-sized tea infuser (for 1 pint, for 1 quart).

Ingredients

We're just making coffee, so the ingredients are the same as always: water and coffee! The following is what I do to make a pint, and I just double it to make a quart:

  • 5 tbsp (30g) coffee beans, coarsely ground
  • 12 oz (350ml) cool water

You can make things stronger by adding more beans or grinding them more finely (though in the latter case you'll have more grit). The more freshly-roasted and freshly-ground your coffee, the better everything will taste.

Steps

  1. Grind coffee beans coarsely and add to the tea infuser
  2. Place the tea infuser into a mason jar.
  3. Pour water over the coffee, refilling periodically as it passes through the grounds, until it is close to the top.
  4. Cover, place in the refrigerator, and let sit for 18+ hours.

I've let it steep for as little as 12 hours and as much as 48 hours and still gotten great results, so there's a lot of flexibility there. Of course, the longer you steep it the stronger it'll get!

While cold-brewed coffee does last a bit longer than hot-brewed, it still gets stale pretty quickly (and can even grow mold). Definitely drink it within a few days!