What is Cold Brew Coffee? How to Make It, Flavor Profile, and Which Coffee Beans Are Best?

In recent years, with the strong promotion from the specialty coffee industry in Europe and America and Starbucks, cold brew coffee has become a popular choice in the world of iced coffee. During the scorching summer, not only can you enjoy a cup at a beautiful coffee shop, but making a batch at home has also become a stylish and pleasant new coffee option. What's the difference between cold brew coffee and regular iced coffee? In this article, FrontStreet Coffee will explore the charms of cold brew coffee.

Understanding Cold Brew Coffee

Unlike regular coffee extraction using hot water, cold brew coffee uses low-temperature steeping, typically requiring 8-12 hours to make. This is why cold brew coffee is often a limited product in many coffee shops. Without the high-temperature extraction process, many chemical molecules in the coffee grounds are not released, resulting in reduced bitterness, astringency, and oils in cold brew coffee. However, due to the prolonged steeping of coffee grounds in water, the caffeine content is higher, and it has an alcoholic fermentation sensation. A little cold brew coffee with ice cubes can feel like drinking strong liquor, and drinking too much or having it too concentrated can cause dizziness.

Why Cold Brew Reduces Bitterness

Why can coffee extracted at low temperatures effectively reduce bitterness and astringency? This is because low-temperature extraction can effectively reduce the release of some heavy molecular weight substances (such as bitterness and body) from coffee particles. At the same time, the extraction time for cold brew coffee is longer, allowing the light molecular flavor substances in the coffee particles to be fully released. Therefore, cold brew coffee can present an overall clean profile while maintaining rich aroma and full-bodied taste.

Precisely because low-temperature steeping cannot extract body substances, cold brew coffee without sweetness and acidity would be like lacking a soul. Moreover, since the quality of bean flavors is clearly and unmistakably exposed by cold brew coffee, it is recommended to use high-quality, freshly roasted beans with obvious flavors or noticeable sweetness and acidity for making cold brew coffee. FrontStreet Coffee sells every variety of coffee beans that have been manually selected more than twice, ensuring that everyone receives uniformly quality coffee beans.

To ensure everyone can enjoy the freshest coffee beans, FrontStreet Coffee ships all coffee beans within 5 days after roasting. The purpose is to hope that every coffee enthusiast can start from the freshest state of coffee beans and experience the flavor charms brought by different states of coffee beans every day.

The Growing Popularity of Cold Brew

In the past, coffee sales would decline in summer and begin to rise again in autumn. But now, cold brew coffee has driven a surge in coffee demand during the hotter months, far greater than other iced coffee beverages. Coffee sales increase with rising temperatures. Cold brew coffee has also attracted a brand new audience for coffee: millennials, many of whom have made it their beverage of choice.

Also due to its popularity among the younger generation, Starbucks saw the opportunity and began launching a cold brew coffee series in 2015. Subsequently, to increase the texture layers of cold brew coffee, they also introduced nitrogen cold brew and vanilla cloud cold brew made with skim milk. Because of Starbucks' launch, more people have become acquainted with this divine summer beverage.

How to Make Cold Brew Coffee at Home

Due to the long preparation time, a cup of cold brew coffee in coffee shops is generally not inexpensive, so FrontStreet Coffee is here to teach everyone how to make cold brew coffee at home (grab your notebooks and take notes!!)

Unlike high-temperature extraction, in the case of low-temperature extraction, if you want the coffee extraction to be more uniform and rich, the coffee grind should be slightly coarser than that for pour-over coffee. Why? Because without heat to increase the movement of water molecules, solid molecules are prone to clumping. Therefore, the finer the coffee grind, the greater the clumping in water, preventing the coffee powder in the middle of the clumps from being fully extracted.

Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee recommends using a grind slightly coarser than granulated sugar (but not as fine as powdered sugar), which is the size that passes through a Chinese standard No. 20 sieve at a rate of 70-75%. For a 1-2 person serving of cold brew coffee, you'll need 30g of coffee grounds, extracted at a 1:13 coffee-to-water ratio (adding 390-400g of ice water/cold water). Use a clean, oil-free sealed container as the extraction vessel. After mixing the coffee grounds and ice water evenly, place in the refrigerator for 8-12 hours. After extraction is complete, filter out the coffee grounds thoroughly to obtain a cold brew coffee with overall cleanliness and full-bodied texture.

Recommended Coffee Beans for Cold Brew

FrontStreet Coffee recommends using light roast coffee beans for making cold brew coffee, such as coffee beans from the Yirgacheffe region of Ethiopia, which display citrus, white floral, honey, and tea-like flavors (FrontStreet Coffee's Natural Red Cherry beans/Washed Gedil beans); or coffee beans from the Kenya region, which display small tomato, dark plum, plum, and caramel flavors (FrontStreet Coffee's Assalia beans);

Or coffee beans from the Costa Rica region, which display dried fruit-like fermentation aroma, red/yellow floral, and almond cream flavors (FrontStreet Coffee's Strawberry Candy beans/Mozart beans); if you want something special, you can try FrontStreet Coffee's Honduras Sherry coffee beans, which display whiskey, vanilla cream, and caramel flavors.

Connect With FrontStreet Coffee

For professional coffee knowledge exchange and more coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat public account: cafe_style).

For more specialty coffee beans, please add FrontStreet Coffee's private WeChat account: qjcoffeex