September 11, 2013
I saw a Kickstarter for a cold brew coffee device today, and I started reading about it. Cold Brew is supposed to taste different from your traditional hot brews – it gets less of the acidic flavors than traditionally brewed coffee, so you wind up with a smoother beverage. Also, cold brew techniques produce a coffee concentrate that you’re supposed to dilute, and the idea of mixing up 50/50 cold brew and milk is interesting.
I had a Twitter exchange with my friend Jordan Killpack about cold brewin', and we determined that the Kickstarter device, while nicely engineered, was a little highfalutin. I decided to try my own cold brew using nothing but mason jars and coffee filters (and coffee, and water).
Going off of the America’s Test Kitchen recipe, I put 60g coffee in the mason jar and added 240g water. After a few minutes, I stirred. I’m going to let it sit until tomorrow night, and then I’ll try it out.
On the right is coffee + water that’s been sitting for about 10 minutes. I just finished stirring the one on the left.
On the right is the prototype for how I’m going to filter the coffee tomorrow. I’ll just invert the assembly over a bowl or big cup and let it all drain. I’ll update with how it worked out.
June 14, 2025
I don’t recall the coffee filter thing working out, but overall this is a decent way to do cold brew.