An example of Cold-Brew Coffee preparation.
I am not a big coffee drinker. Working in an office, some people’s days seem to revolve around coffee. I’m not sure whether it’s that they like the taste, or the social aspect of getting coffee, or whether it’s because they’re all just caffeine junkies and cannot survive without it.
I don’t really understand the attraction though. I don’t like hot drinks, and coffee to me tastes like bitter water, to which I have to add milk to cool it down, and sweeteners to kill the bitter taste. By that stage what’s the point? It becomes sweet flavoured milk.
Then I came across a couple of articles on Cold-Brew Coffee. The concept is simple; instead of brewing coffee in scalding hot water, you brew it in cold water. The caveat being that it takes 12 hours, so this is not a quick morning pick-me-up.
The reasons for cold-brewing sounded good to me. The end product is less bitter, since the slower cold-brew process allows more complex flavours to be extracted from the grounds, and unlike using hot water, it does not release a lot of the acids which give hot coffee its bitter taste. If done right, it does away with the need for any sweeteners, so you get the full flavour of the coffee itself.
This sounded like a fun experiment, so I added a bag of decent quality plunger coffee grounds and some coffee filters to my weekly shopping list.
Now following the instructions, it calls for 1 cup of coffee grounds (yes, a cup) to around a litre of water. As I created this mixture I realised that what you end up with is a concentrate, so not something you’re going to drink straight. In the interests of avoiding a lethal caffeine overdose I did buy decaf. It still smelt like the real thing however.
First note for next time: Measure out the coffee first, then add the water.
Clearly I am such a coffee novice that I didn’t realise it can float on water. At least I was adding it a tablespoon at a time and didn’t try dumping the whole cup on top of the water. The resulting mess would have been much worse. Plenty of stirring was required to mix it all in, and the end result resembled some sort of chocolate syrup.
The mixture is now covered, and sitting in the fridge for the night to brew. Tomorrow morning I will attempt to filter and bottle it, and then the all important taste test. This could still all end in tears.
Stay tuned for an update…