http://dwelltimecambridge.com/coffee/20 ... cold-brew/

I realize their are a few iced coffee threads right now--it's pretty close to summer-- but Dan and I felt it made sense to give this it's own thread, as to not get lost in the dust.

First of all, I have no actual affiliation with barismo/dwell. I will however not be bashful in saying they are my favorite roaster, and I probably buy 80-90% of my beans from them.

It is important to differentiate between what most people think of when they hear cold brew (room temp toddy), and what is going on with this process.

First off, the grind is not as coarse as Toddy. This, IMO, does a couple things. It allows for a broader range of desirable constituents to be extracted, while simultaneously cutting out acrid and astringent flavors that would be extracted from the micro-fines that come along with a coarser grind.

The brewing process must be cold the entire time (<40F)
Steep time should be 24 hours, followed by a three stage polyprolene filtration

From this point there are a couple options. dwell time is storing and serving their brew in nitro-kegs on tap. For the home coffee enthusiast, this might be a little over the top, so a nice fall back that I use at home is a amber glass growler. These can be picked up a local brew store, or reused from a sanitized beer growler. This is a brief run down, check out the links for more info.
Cheers

http://blog.barismo.com/2012/05/iced-co ... g-hot.html

Hmmm, this still sounds like a variation on Toddy. Lots of people vary grind, use temps from room temp down to close to freezing, and steep time, the only clear difference is the manner of filtration.

Pretty much this. I'm unclear on how changing the grind and filtration methods from some rigid "toddy" definition makes it an entirely different product. I make cold brew at room temperature, with a medium grind, and filter it with paper, often in two stages. Maybe I should call it Waterloo Iced Coffee?

Everyone wants to rubber stamp something as their own, once they vary one parameter of the production. I guess it's all ego. I say just call it iced coffee.

I made a hot brew over ice yesterday, but instead of sweetening mine with sugar like I did for my gf ( she likes a little coffee with her milk and sugar) I put the extract in a martini shaker with some Stevia powder and shook it up. Poured over ice and topped with organic whole milk. The initial flavor was still amazing, but was quickly met with a long lasting, disgustingly bitter aftertaste that made me pour the whole thing down the sink. I think I'll try to start making mine without any sweetener and see if that eliminates the bitter finish.

It's weird, Stevia advertises specifically that it doesn't have the bitter metallic aftertaste of chemical sugar substitutes, but that seems to be what happened here. Anyone else have any experience with using it to sweeten iced coffee?

No experience with Stevia and iced coffee, I normally don't add sweetener, but I have put Splenda in iced coffee for the Wife and did not notice any adverse effects. I just didn't really like it with the extra sweetness, just my preference.

I still need to try cold brew filtered with flannel (picked up a sock pot filter) which I've heard makes all the difference. I tried the flannel filter with regular coffee and enjoyed it.

Yeah Im not an artificial sweetener expert, but I just want to avoid aspartame and the others like it.

let me know what you think of the flannel trick. i've not seen any on the market.

the_trystero wrote:Hmmm, this still sounds like a variation on Toddy. Lots of people vary grind, use temps from room temp down to close to freezing, and steep time, the only clear difference is the manner of filtration.

The manner of filtration is indeed one of the most important steps. I am not aware of any toddy that is filtered with this level of precision.

My third stage right now is 2.5 micron, which gives a pretty clean cup, although I am ordering some 1μ bags for a little more clarity. The local shops that do Toddy around here just let it sit in a plastic bucket in the shop over night, and then filter through a wire mesh strainer, leaving it laden with french press-esque silt.

The result is literally a completely different product. Things can seem like this and that, but upon trying both, one can be contextually accurate in his/her own subjective reasoning, rather than asserting based on practices that uses siimilar (but still different) techniques.

TomC wrote:Yeah Im not an artificial sweetener expert, but I just want to avoid aspartame and the others like it.

let me know what you think of the flannel trick. i've not seen any on the market.

I used to just use my hario woodneck cloth filter, which was painfully slow for anything larger than 500ml.
Save yourself the trouble and pick up a few various sized polypropelene filter bags. A base point would be something like:
Metal strainer> 100μ>2.5μ (would give a great cup)
Or
Metal strainer>50>25>1 (would result in a very pristine cup)
http://www.mcmaster.com/#standard-filter-bags/=hx0j2f

Cold brews can be quickly and easily filtered with an aeropress, using whatever filter suits you better, paper, cloth, metal, gold or stainless steel mesh.. Just drop the mixture and plunge down, depending on the quantity of cold brewed coffee being made, you'll probably have to repeat the process a couple of times, tossing the grounds each time.

ex trahere wrote:I used to just use my hario woodneck cloth filter, which was painfully slow for anything larger than 500ml.
Save yourself the trouble and pick up a few various sized polypropelene filter bags. A base point would be something like:
Metal strainer> 100μ>2.5μ (would give a great cup)
Or
Metal strainer>50>25>1 (would result in a very pristine cup)
http://www.mcmaster.com/#standard-filter-bags/=hx0j2f

Awesome, thanks for the tips on the filters! I definitely am going to do some polypropelene filtering!