Homemade Cold Brew
I think it’s high time everyone comes to the realization that cold brew is SUPER simple to make AND much cheaper than anything you buy at the store or a coffee shop!
We were buying two 48oz containers of Stok cold brew from the store every week and let me tell you, not only was it pricey but it also created a lot of plastic getting tossed in the trash. I wasn’t a fan of either of those so I took it upon myself to look into some better options.
After reading a few articles on what others were doing, I invested in a couple pitchers and coffee filters, bought the cheapest bag of coffee I could find at Walmart, and went to experimenting! After about a month of making my own cold brew, I’ve got things down to a simple process that I’m excited to share with you!
Choosing Your Coffee
I personally love flavored coffee grounds and especially love using them for iced coffee. I mix it up and try different flavors every time I use up a bag, but I’ve found that you really can’t go wrong. My rule of thumb is that if you like it brewed hot, you’ll love it brewed cold.
Brewing Your Coffee
This process is as simple as combining coffee grounds with water. That’s it!
How Long to Brew Your Coffee
I’ve read many different time lines on how long to brew your coffee and it really just comes down to how strong you want it to be in terms of caffeine. Two days will get you to a great flavor point and reasonable amount of caffeine. After that it will escalate from there so I recommend playing with it a bit to see what works best for your preferences.
Straining Your Coffee
You can definitely buy a fancy piece of equipment for this, but I went the cheap route and simple use a sieve and a large coffee filter placed over a bowl. This is probably the most tedious part of the process since you’ll need to slowly pour your coffee in, but I typically multitask and do it while cleaning the kitchen or cooking.
Diluting Your Concentrate
After straining out the grounds, you now have what would be considered a coffee concentrate and you will need to add water. I prefer and 1:1 ratio, but this is also something that you may want to tweak based on your own preference. I immediately add water to make my cold brew, but you can also add it as needed.
What you’ll need:
– 1 cup ground coffee
– 7 cups cold filtered water, divided
– 48oz pitcher
– sieve
– large bowl
– coffee filters
What you’ll do:
– Add your coffee grounds and 4 cups water to your pitcher. Stir and let sit in your refrigerator for 24 -48 hours.
– Place a coffee filter in your sieve and put that over your large bowl. Gradually pour your coffee over the filter and sieve until all of liquid has drained into the bowl. (You should end up with 3 cups coffee concentrate.)
– Rinse out your pitcher and combine your coffee concentrate and 3 cups water. Stir and ENJOY!
A few notes:
– You can use any ground coffee you want for this. We’ve just been buying the off brand option at Walmart and mixing it up with the flavors.
– These are the pitchers that I bought on Amazon.
– This is the article I found most helpful when doing my research. It also has some alternative methods to seeping your coffee grounds if you’re interested in using some different tools.
– I started off seeping my grounds for 24 hours but we felt like 48 hours gave us the level of caffeine that we were looking for.
– When straining the grounds from your coffee concentrate, be prepared for this process to take some time. I typically do it while cleaning the kitchen or making a meal so that I can slowly strain it little by little.