Cold Brew Coffee II
Awhile back, I reported on my experiment with cold brew coffee. I was not impressed.
I tried again last night.
I used the recipe reported here, about 1-1/2 cups water with 4 ounces by weight of coarse, freshly-ground Community Medium Roast. Ah, except, um, the water is added in three steps, 1/2 cup at a time. I only saw the first 1/2 cup, and thought that couldn’t be enough, so I used 1 full cup. Infusion was for 7 hours in a glass bowl with a sealable plastic lid (basically, glass Tupperware.)
Again, I used filter papers on the vegetable steamer as a strainer, although this time I just set it in a large glass bowl.
I only got about one fluid ounce of concentrate, which I diluted with 9 oz. hot water, and added half-and-half and sugar as I would for an ordinary cup of coffee (yielding a total of just shy of 11 oz.)
It was delicious, if not transcendent. Very smooth, and the essence of what I think coffee should taste like. In fact, it tasted exactly like what the coffee section in the grocery store smelled like.
But I have to try it yet again with a reasonable amount of water, maybe two cups. A third of a bag of coffee and eight hours is just too much for one cup of coffee, albeit a really good one.
As a control, I also ground a little bit of the Community for my automatic dripper. That was good coffee, different although not better than my usual Yuban, but nowhere near as good as the cold brew version.
Tags: cold brew coffee, Community Coffee