Make Cold Brew Coffee At Home It’s So Easy And Your Iced Coffee Will Never Taste Watery Or Bitter Again
If you crave a good iced coffee in the summer, but loathe the way so many end up tasting watery or overly bitter, then there’s only one solution: cold brew coffee. This method guarantees a smooth and icy cup, every time.
Making cold brew coffee is no great secret, nor does it require the ninja-level skills of a trained barista in order to master. You don’t even need much special equipment beyond a large container for making the coffee and a strainer.
Kyoto Slow Drip Coffee
The Kyoto slow drip looks like a complex Rube Goldberg-esque contraption, but it makes a coffee thats a cross between a cold brew and a slow drip coffee.
The device is made from three separate sections. Water is poured into the top where it slowly drips into the middle section that holds the coffee beans, allowing them to become steeped in the water. And then the coffee moves through a tube into a container at the bottom where the coffee is collected.
The whole process can take 12 to 24 hours, resulting in a coffee that has very pronounced flavors. If youre really passionate about your coffee, maybe youll have a Kyoto slow drip at home, but chances are youll likely have to try this style of coffee at a specialty coffee shop.
You Probably Need A Scale
The biggest takeaway from talking to experts about at-home coffee is that its a craft, an art, and requires some level of precision. Rosenberg laid it out pretty simply:
I liken a lot of the things with coffee prep to cooking or especially baking, she said. You can not follow a recipe and get different results every time you bake a cake. You can follow a recipe that uses volume measurements thats not gonna be quite as accurate, or you can pull out your scale and really hit the mark on predicting whats going to come out.
I think a scale can be really intimidating, so I understand theres a fear or it feels fussy, but think about how many ingredients go into a cake, she added. Coffee is just two. Unless youre a super confident baker, you wouldnt eyeball ingredients, so just use some sort of measurement tool to make sure youre being consistent.
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Another reason a scale is so important? Your coffee maker could be lying to you. If you look at the carafe at the lines that say three, four cups those arent actual cup sizes, and that can be very confusing, Lyman said. Especially because they dont tell you theyre not real cups. I think theyre considered five-ounce cups. I dont know why they do it that way, they just do.
Of course, having a good, fresh product matters, too.
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Easy Steps To Make The Best Coffee At Home
How to improve your coffee at home without going full Barista on it!
I have spent years making coffee at home, trying to make the best coffee I can. I will share with you all I have learnt. And tips to help along the way.
Below you will find the 4 crucial steps needed to make the best coffee.
If you want to find out more about each step, continue reading.
Grind The Beans Coarsely
Heres the only fussy thing about making cold brew coffee: you should take care to use coarsely ground beans. A fine grind can slip through the sieve you use in this method and create a gritty, cloudy end product.
The grind you want is extra coarsea slightly larger grind than youd use for a French press or percolator. If youre buying your beans from a café, simply tell the barista that youll be making cold brew they will know exactly what to do. If youre using the grinder at the grocery store or at home, opt for the coarsest setting.
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S For Making Cold Brew Coffee
Here’s how it works: Grind the coffee coarsely, which you can do yourself at home or wherever you buy the beans. Combine the grounds with water, then let it steep overnight, or for around 12 hours.
During this time, the coffee slowly infuses into the water, creating a strong, concentrated brew. Strain the next morning, and you’re ready to go.
Why Is Cold Brew Coffee More Expensive
When you hit up your favorite café, youll likely notice that a cup of cold brew is more expensive than the same sized cup of freshly brewed hot coffee. Why is it so much more expensive? Two factors: Time and materials.
Cold brew coffee steeps for anywhere between 12 and 48 hours, and as we all know time equals money. Also, cold brew coffee requires a greater volume of ground coffee than drip, French press or pour-over coffee. Between the extra time and extra beans, cold brew just costs more to make, so thats why youll pay more.
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Tricks To Make A Perfect Cup Of Coffee
Who doesnt like a good cup of coffee in the morning that gives you enough boost to get through the day? While you can get the perfect cup of coffee in coffee shops made by your favorite baristas, drinking them every day in coffee shops is expensive and not feasible for everyone.
In this article, we will share 15 tricks that will help you make that perfect cup of coffee right from the comfort of your home.
When it comes to coffee, even small mistakes can change the complete taste of your coffee in the end or even ruin it. Thats why it is important to pay attention to minor details that often get left out. Once you start understanding those you will find making that perfect cup of coffee easy.
Brewing Using Filtration Or Dripping
Filtration or drip coffee is all the rage in the coffee community at the moment it seems as if a new, funky looking and progressive dripper is being invented every other month. We have a list of the most loved pour over brewers here, but its an uphill battle to keep it up to date .
Were going to cover pour over dripping, cold brewing, drip machines, and everything in between. We assume youre going to start with whole beans and grind them fresh, because this is how you should do it.
Brewing is relatively straightforward: Pour your water over your freshly ground beans that sit in a filter of some sort.
Gravity aids the water as it passes through the grounds and the result is a clean, clear and light bodied tasting brew. Youll want to use a gooseneck kettle, to control the rate of your pour.
Less is more with drip style coffee brewing most drippers are small, portable, inexpensive, and are just a damn good way to brew small batches of great tasting coffee.
The drippers you want to get to know, which weve covered below, are the electric percolator, the Chemex, the Hario V60, The Kalita Wave, the Melitta Ready Set Joe dripper, the Vietnamese dripper, the Beehouse dripper, and the cold-drip method of brewing. Any of these is going to kick your coffee up a notch from the once-ubiquitous Mr. Coffee.
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Additional Tips To Improve Home Brewing Methods:
- Before use, rinse filters with hot water to remove any chemicals on the paper. Most common sized filters are also available unbleached.
- For the pour over methods, employ a slow and steady pour of hot water in a spiral motion from the center outwards to thoroughly saturate all the coffee grounds evenly, which ensures optimal extraction.
- To achieve even water distribution for the pour over and pressed coffee making methods, use a narrow spouted pouring kettle.
- Start with cold, filtered water when possible.
- Use fresh roasted beans and grind the beans just before brewing
- Hot water should be just off boil .
- Rinse the makers and cups with hot water in advance to keep coffee hot for longer.
- Some trial and error is to be expected when experimenting with new brew methods. Everyones taste preference varies, so dont be afraid to adjust the grind or amount of coffee to suit your palette.
- Dont forget to compost your used coffee grinds, filters included!
A Cup Of Coffee Can Taste Different Depending On The Quality Of Your Water
Another important factor to consider when making coffee at home is your water, which makes up about 98% of your brewed cup of coffee, according to Viguera.
“As the main solvent for extracting the flavor and aroma from your ground coffee, your water needs a certain level of hardness/minerality and alkalinity for a quality extraction,” she told Insider. “Depending on where you live, your tap water may be too hard/soft to bring out the best in your cup.”
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Buy Fresh Whole Bean Coffee
A cup of coffee is only as good as the beans you start with.
If you’re buying bags of preground coffee, you’re doing it wrong. Instead, start with fresh, whole beans.
There’s a reason most coffee companies don’t provide the date for when the coffee was roasted the stuff you find on the shelf in the grocery store has probably been there for months. Coffee reaches its peak flavor just days after it has been roasted and should be consumed within a month of its roast date.
To find fresh coffee, check local coffee shops. Some roast on the spot or source from local roasters who roast in smaller batches, which typically means fresher coffee.
Brew Fresh Coffee Within Its First 2 Weeks After Roasting
“Coffee is a natural product , and while it will never spoil, it will lose a lot of flavor if it sits around too long,” Zad told Insider.
Coffee flavor peaks within the first two weeks after roasting, according to Viguera, so it’s important to make sure the coffee you’re buying was recently roasted.
In order to maintain your coffee’s freshness, proper storage is also important. Zad suggested keeping it away from heat, light, moisture, and the freezer.
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Keep Your Equipment Clean
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As Phillips gently reminded us, coffee extracts oil. Its tasty, but can turn your clean carafe filthy over time. I would bet 90 percent of carafes you brew coffee into right now are dirty enough to the point of being able to taste it in the cup, he said. People dont realize how often and thoroughly they should be cleaning equipment. Rather than giving your carafes a quick rinse with water, scrub them thoroughly with soap and hot water to pull out those oils.
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At the end of the day, it all really boils down to taste, and the experts agreed that whatever your preference makes the best cup of coffee for you. Things like acidity and taste vary by region, and Lindberg even offers up her recommendations for which coffees from Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica she thinks pair more deliciously than others. Its all a matter of preference.
But yeah, good water, a grinder and a scale seem to be pretty important, too.
Where Do You Find Good Coffee
I have traveled the world enjoying different types of coffee everywhere I go. Just as I sample local craft beers during my travels I also look for local coffee roasters. But to be able to taste and understand the differences in coffee, you need to start with a good baseline. A quality cup of coffee on which to judge all others by. And this is why I drink Peets coffee in my home.
Peets Coffee is obsessed with freshness. Fresher coffee makes a more flavorful cup. Thats why they roast to order and deliver directly to your grocery shelves, ensuring their coffee gets to you faster and fresher than anyone else. Youll never have to worry about old flavorless coffee when you buy Peets brand.
Peets has been roasting coffee for more than 50 years and understands good coffee and its importance. It all started on Vine and Walnut Streets in Berkeley, CA where Alfred Peet opened his first shop in 1966 with one goal, to make coffee, unlike anything America had tasted before. Today, they abide by his exacting standards to deliver the richest, most flavorful cup, using only the worlds finest beans, hand roasting in small batches, and never compromising on freshness.
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What Makes Great Coffee According To Experts
Pabst and Milos broke it down to its simplest components for me. A brews flavor derives from two primary things: Thereswhere and how the beans are grown and how darkly or lightly its roasted.
When it comes to roasting, Milos takes the view that there is no right or wrong level, it comes down to personal taste. He compared the preference for lighter roasts versus darker ones to liking steak rare versus well-done.
But what about the brewing process itself? With so many methods, surely there were differences in the taste of the final cup that went beyond the bean. There, Pabst and Milos had opinions, but to really find out firsthand, I decided to stage a cage-match style cup-off. I chose five of the most popular home-brewing methods to compete against each other for my own personal single best cup of coffee. Best cup, in this case, being the one that tasted most like I had enjoyed in Italy.
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As the commercial goes, the best part of waking up is a certain brand of industrial brew often made into a watery thing resembling coffee from a flimsy machine. But really the best part of every morning should be the act of making an actually-great cup of coffee, one at a time, in a Hario V60 or Chemex or French press. The ritual of brewing coffee is itself a satisfying endeavor.
Theres truly nothing wrong with using a machine to brew coffee, and some machines are even better than the methods described here: I liken it to how some people want self-driving cars while others like manual transmissions. As many people isolate at home during the novel coronavirus pandemic, theres no better time to master the art of manually brewing coffee. Here now, five ways to make coffee almost as good as you would find in a cafe, right in the comfort of your own kitchen.
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The Stylish Coffee Lover Who Wants A Handsome All
The background: The Chemex is essentially a one-piece brewer and coffee server with some quirks. The design, which was introduced in 1941 by chemist Dr. Peter Schlumbohm, makes it the most beautiful device out there, with thick glass in a conical shape hemmed in by a wooden collar and leather laces. Early versions used hand-blown glass and a more perfectly symmetrical shape, though newer ones have a rounder bulb and even glass handles for easier cleaning.
It looks great on the counter, kitchen table, or anywhere really, and the way the laboratory-like glass refracts and plays with the light when the coffee is in there makes the drink look alluring. Take it from renowned coffee expert and co-founder of Londons Square Mile Coffee James Hoffmann, who seems particularly smitten by the way coffee looks when brewed into a Chemex. And the standard 6-cup size makes more than enough coffee for two people, which makes the Chemex a great weekend brewing method for the family.
How it works: Grounds go into a filter on the top of the flask-shaped device, then you pour water over the top as the coffee drips into the compartment below. Hoffmann asserts that the Chemex isnt a perfect brewer, as the filters can sometimes lock in air and prevent a smooth flow of water, which is why the pouring spout has a divet to allow air to escape. The paper filters are thick, allowing for even extraction, but Chemex alone sells the filters you need .
Chemex Pour-Over Glass Coffeemaker
These Are Our Favorite Ways To Make Coffee At Home
Not to hate on the 12-cup automatic drip coffee maker taking up approximately a quarter of the counter space in your kitchen, but there are far better ways to make coffee at home. When we want a superior cup of that good brown morning medicineespecially when we spent good money on quality coffee that we took the time to grind ourselveswe turn to a handful of low-tech brewing methods to get the most our of the beans. It’s time to learn how to brew a proper cup. These are our three favorite affordable, small-batch coffee brewing devices and what we like about them.
All products are independently selected by our editors. However, if you buy something through our affiliate links, we earn a commission.
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Brew At The Right Temperature
Many automatic drip machines don’t reach optimal brewing temperature.
Another step many automatic coffee makers skip is reaching optimal temperature. The desired brew temperature for drip coffee is between 195 and 205 degrees Fahrenheit. Newer, high-end models sometimes have a manual temperature adjustment, but older, cheaper makers do not.
To make sure your coffee maker gets hot enough, run it without any coffee in the hopper and use a thermometer to measure the temperature. If you can, try to measure the temperature during the brewing process, as the water temperature will drop as it passes through the hopper and into the carafe beneath. If it never reaches at least 195 degrees Fahrenheit, see if pre-boiling your water in a kettle helps.
Keep in mind, however, you do not want to exceed 205 degrees, as it will “burn” the coffee. If this doesn’t work, you might want to consider upgrading your coffee maker.