Anybody try cold brewed coffee? - Page 5

Coffee preparation techniques besides espresso like pourover.
Netphilosopher
Posts: 108
Joined: 13 years ago

#41: Post by Netphilosopher »

bigbad wrote:...
I doubt there's any noticeable difference between using that setup and just hot-brewing some coffee and tossing in ice.
...
There is, but only because hot-brewed normal coffee ends up about 1.1-1.4% strength, and coffee brewed for drink mixing and iced coffee tends to want to be more like 3% - 5% strength (a weak espresso-like strength). Normal coffee iced ends up technically "weak", around 0.85% - 1% strength when the ice melts.
bigbad wrote:...Before cold brewing, I used to just pull a shot of espresso, add ice and milk for an iced latte. I've also tossed a warm latte into the fridge to drink later, and it also tasted just about identical. It's very hard to taste any staleness if you're adding milk, which literally absorbs everything.

For the most part, I think it's fine. People bring up "staleness" a lot, but I doubt 99% of coffee drinkers have the palette to even notice it, especially when most people add milk to the drink.

I like to drink cold brewed coffee without milk, so I can taste the staleness after a few days in the fridge, but I'll just add more coffee and it won't be a big deal.
Agreed on the staleness comments - I find brewed coffee concentrate, if quickly sealed and cooled will be viable for a surprisingly long time for ice cream, iced coffee, and even "semi-instant" in a pinch.

I do get some indication that the flavor of cold brewed coffee may be more stable than hot-brewed high strength coffee concentrate. I suspect that this is just an indication that these methods do not end up with the same extracted content from the coffee. In fact, after a few days, the hot-brewed coffee tends to "degrade" in flavor, losing acidity and varietal taste AND aroma and starts to taste not surprisingly like... cold brewed coffee.


In a way, I can kind of justify this in my mind - if hot-brewing extracts aromatics and volatile components out of the coffee that cold-brewing doesn't, then it stands to reason that over time these volatile components (the molecules responsible for aroma and subtle flavors) will dissipate from a hot-brewed cup of coffee, even if stored cold. Since these components aren't extracted during cold-brewing, they aren't in the final drink and can't dissipate during storage.

For me, straight up cold-brewing is something I'm kind of finished experimenting with. I just saw this thread and thought I'd share my experiences and my own results. Being a home roaster, once I was exposed to the world of single-origin flavor and aroma ranges, it just seemed like a shame to leave these flavors behind in the grounds for the compost heap, when I've spent all that time roasting my own coffee specifically for getting these characters.


I've concluded that cold-brewing works, but use lower cost but consistent blends - even store-bought dunkin donuts or eight o' clock - for cold-brewing. Using this thinking, I did even cold-brew some purposely-staled old Eight O' Clock 100% Colombia, and it came out SURPRISINGLY well. (one may ask why I might purposely-stale coffee. Another subject but those were coffee storage experiments and I needed samples of stale coffee for taste comparison). As long as you have coffee that hasn't started converting to thiols and other staling compounds (i.e. they just aren't aromatic anymore, but don't smell "skunky" or obviously rancid), I suspect it'll make fine cold-brewed coffee.

craiglyn
Posts: 5
Joined: 13 years ago

#42: Post by craiglyn »

I thought that this might be of interest to a few folks out there.

Here's a picture of my diy cold brew tower.


Bittersea
Posts: 1
Joined: 13 years ago

#43: Post by Bittersea »

Hi Craiglyn -

I'm building a cold brew tower out of my lab equipment, and I'm using the seperatory funnel and an erlenmeyer flask for the bottom, but what did you use for the middle piece? I'm not familiar with glassware like that ... I was thinking of moding a french press beaker with the mesh, but would rather be able to buy a piece without having to go through the arduous task of cutting glass.

Any insights are appreciated!

Thanks,
ic

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Bob_McBob
Posts: 2324
Joined: 15 years ago

#44: Post by Bob_McBob »

Looks like the top half of a Yama vac brewer.

http://www.orphanespresso.com/Yama-Repl ... _2382.html
Chris

jonny
Posts: 953
Joined: 13 years ago

#45: Post by jonny »

it could also be a glass buchner funnel like these: http://www.novatech-usa.com/Products/Gl ... er-Funnels

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