Following the thought of “Things That Are Painfully Obvious”, a friend sent along a link to me a week or two ago about cold brewed coffee. Now, I had heard of this before, but always assumed it was tedious or complicated and involved fancy equipment. Nope! Previously when I wanted iced coffee I’d make some in my stovetop espresso maker, pop it in the freezer for 25-20 minutes and then serve it over ice. The benefit of cold brewing your coffee is that it is apparently less acidic as there is no heat involved (which is what releases most of the acid in coffee) and you don’t have to add more heat to an already hot summer day! I’m really not sure why I didn’t think of this sooner. For cold brewed coffee, all you need is:
Cold Brewed Coffee
Ingredients
- - an empty glass spaghetti sauce jar cleaned, of course
- - 1/4-1/3 spaghetti sauce jar of medium-course grind coffee
- - water
Instructions
- Fill the empty spaghetti sauce jar 1/4-1/3 of the way full with medium-course grind coffee.
- Fill with water, cover and shake.
- Leave on the counter at least overnight to "brew".
- Filter twice through a fine mesh strainer or coffee filter, get rid of grinds (or compost!) and put the translucent coffee "concentrate" back into the rinsed-out spaghetti jar.
- Store in fridge.
Here is what was left in mine for the second filtering:
To make your coffee. Fill a glass with ice, pour about an inch and a half of your coffee concentrate (it’s stronger than regular coffee) and dilute with soymilk (or your milk of choice) to taste. Voila! Because it is less bitter, it doesn’t even really need sugar! I do this with my parents’ Costco brand coffee only because I can’t dream of buying more coffee when we have so many bags, but ideally I’d use a fresher, organic brand and I think it would taste even better!
The finished product!You really don’t need anything fancy to make cold brewed coffee, but if you want to make more at once or step it up a notch to avoid the filters, I was recommended this cold brewed coffee maker, which can be used for coffee or tea:
Just set mine on the counter to brew. I can’t wait to try this!
I would love to try this but I’m wondering what size jar do you use? I have various sizes of jars of sauce. Thank you! ?
I wrote this post 8 years ago, haha, so no recollection of the jar. If you read the recipe you see I just out a proportion of the jar, so use whatever jar you like.