Cold Brew – A 24 Hour experiment

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I have been reading and watching videos about coffee brewing. In the process I kept seeing cold brew coffee come up again and again and it made me curious to try.

When listening to podcasts about thru-hiking I heard people speak about cold soaking food, rather than cooking it. The idea is that you prepare your meal an hour or more ahead of the time you want to eat it, and you let water and time prepare the food for consumption.

Preparation

For the cold brew experiment I carried out I ground down 40 grams of coffee coarsely before putting it into a french press. I had about 41 grams of coffee, ground up coarsely, to 250ml of water.

I poured the cold water in and then stirred the water and grounds straight after pouring but also half an hour to an hour later. The grounds that had been floating became water logged and drifted to the bottom of the glass beaker and settled.

The Wait – Initial taste

I left it in the fridge until the next morning, pushed the plunger down and then poured it into an insulated mug and tried some. It tasted bad.

Dilute Rather Than Add Sugar

My first reaction was to put sugar in but experience has taught me that putting sugar in some coffee makes it worse, so I didn’t. I then read that you shouldn’t put sugar in cold brew coffee so I am happy not to have made that mistake.

I diluted it with water. It tastes better. I left it to sit for another day. I am drinking the cold brew coffee as I write this post. The result is drinkable but I wouldn’t make a habit of drinking cold brew.

It feels inefficient

Cold Brew coffee has two problems. The first is that it takes from 12-24 hours to prepare due to the long soaking time. The second reason is that you use 40 grams to make a single coffee. There are a number of conversations about how wasteful it is if you google “Cold Brew wasteful”. Usually I would make a coffee with 15-16 grams of coffee.

I didn’t bother with specialist cold brew coffee, preferring just to use the coffee I had at home at the time. I could try again with dedicated cold brew coffee to see if the experience is better.

If I was to make it again I think I would try making cold brew coffee for Tiramisu. According to google this is a normal practice.