*This post contains external links and products. The Non-Binary Barista is not affiliated with any of these companies. Basically, I bought these coffees with my own money and get nothing in return from these companies. While I may talk about my preferences below, the Non-Binary Barista does not endorse or condone these companies and products in any official capacity.*
At the main coffee shop that I worked at in California, a huge part of my job was making cold brew concentrate. That shop prided themselves on their cold brew, and a lot of my coworkers hated the process of making it. If you are used to making batches of cold brew, the process isn’t different but it just wasn’t my coworkers’ favorite activity but I liked doing it. Lately, I’ve been craving cold brew but so many places here in Portland serve Flash Brew/Iced Coffee instead.
However, like many baristas right now, I don’t have access to a coffee grinder. My automatic brewer is a conical brew basket and I make pour overs at home, so I get all my coffee ground for pour over when I order it for convenience. So, I thought about making my own but didn’t have the money to buy more coffee ground just for cold brew.
Then, an idea struck: Could a cold brew be made with coffee not ground for cold brew?
I hit up my friend, Rhett, who knows way more about extraction and grind than I do to ask his opinion and after some discussion decided to play around. What I was looking for was a concentrated coffee that had the low acidity of cold brew but the strength to retain its coffee taste when milk and sweetener were added (because that is how I like my coffee). What I don’t like about flash brew is that I believe a lot of the strength of the coffee is watered down because you are putting hot coffee on ice.
Now, I hear all you iced coffee fans screaming that I must have made my coffee wrong but let me just state first and foremost that my desire for cold brew over iced coffee is a matter of preference. Secondly, I have made flash brew with a batch brewer and an exact recipe, with a pour over (thanks Umeko for the flash brew recipe from forever ago), and with hot coffee that has been refrigerated. Every iced coffee recipe that I can find, I try because I want this to work towards my coffee preferences but haven’t found what I’m looking for. Cold Brew will always be way more time consuming, whether it is my 8-hour recipe or your preferred go-to with properly ground beans (I usually favor a 16-hour), and more expensive because of the amount of coffee required. But, this was what I wanted and why I tried so hard to perfect this experiment.
So, without anymore prologue, here is my tests, process, and results.
Attempt 1: Blue Creek Blend from Water Avenue
½ cup (about 45g) of coffee
Filled the rest of the 1 Liter jar with water (about 3 or 4 cups or 800ish grams of water).
6-hour brew
***First off, from here on out, I will be using weighted measurements but, since I was trying to see if this would even work in the first place, I decided to riff off of a previous recipe I had which wasn’t weighed out. So, don’t worry that this is imprecise. I’m aware.
Overall, not a perfect extraction. This coffee was very dark tasting with heavy nutty notes so it was difficult to tell between the nutty bitterness present in the coffee already and the bitterness of over-extraction, which is why I stayed conservative in my timing.
But, the coffee still tasted like cold brew with a nice, strong coffee taste, smooth cold brew mouth feel, and held its coffee flavor when paired with milk and sweetener. I was really pleased with the result. The coffee was a ready-to-drink cold brew rather than a concentrate which is what I was going for so I wanted to change the coffee that I was using to play around with all the variables.
Attempt 2: Bali Kintamani Natural from PushxPull
60g coffee
1000g water (1 liter)
8-hour brew
I had mixed feelings about this batch.
Good: This coffee is more delicate so it produces a more refreshing and lighter cold brew. After 6 hours, the coffee had not come into its full flavor so I extended the time to 8 hours and liked the level of extraction.
Bad: This coffee was muted. I had originally based this recipe on James Hoffmann’s coffee ratio of 60g per liter, with no other reason than needing a base recipe to start with after finding that a short cold brew was possible. However, after researching a couple of cold brew recipes, I found that most were between 100g-250g of coffee. So I decided that the next experiment needed way more coffee.
3rd Attempt: Bali Kintamani from PushxPull
140g coffee
1000g water
8-hour brew
As soon as I tasted this batch, I knew that I had done it. Do you ever just get that feeling where you know the thing that you’ve been working on has worked out? So, here goes: This batch produced a concentrate that packs a nice punch, and works best as a 1:1 ratio of concentrate to water. It held its own when paired with milk, and had a nice solid coffee flavor. I picked up on notes of plum (deep, smooth fruity flavor), cacao nib (almost chocolatey, roasty undertones), and hibiscus (tart aftertaste).
To test my results, I also did a batch with another coffee to see if both coffees would yield the same level of concentration and to check if their were any similar tastes that would point to over/under extraction or weirdness from the experiment and found none. The other batch was the same ratio and time but was a Rwanda (from Recluse) and it had a completely different taste (as you would expect from tasting two separate coffees).
I’m so excited to hear about if you try this and what you think. Feel free to experiment with your own cold brew preferences as well. I often tried these at 6 hours and found it still pretty pleasing. While I usually favor a 16-hour Cold Brew, someone who prefers a longer brew time (like 24+ hours) may want to try 10-12 hours instead. More time will produce a higher extraction, while more coffee will give you a more concentrated drink.
The Non-Binary Barista 