How to Make Cold Brew Coffee at Home: Exploring Different Ratios for Varied Flavors

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Besides being extracted with hot water, coffee can also be made with cold water. Coffee made with cold water is called "cold brew coffee," which offers a unique charm compared to hot brewed coffee.

Cold brew coffee is divided into cold brew and iced drip coffee. Cold brew involves steeping coffee grounds in cold water, while iced drip coffee refers to extracting coffee drop by drop using a drip filtration method. Some friends might ask FrontStreet Coffee: "Should cold brew be made with hot water or cold water?" Coffee made with hot water cannot be called cold brew. Cold brew can only be steeped with room temperature water or ice water, and the steeping environment must be maintained at low temperatures.

Since it only comes into contact with low-temperature cold water at 4-10°C throughout the entire process, the extraction efficiency is extremely low, and bitter macromolecules are not easily released. The long-term low-temperature steeping allows for more thorough extraction of compounds like sugars and organic acids, resulting in more balanced acidity, sweetness, and body in the coffee.

How to Make Delicious Cold Brew Coffee

So how should cold brew coffee be made to taste good? Here FrontStreet Coffee shares several operational details with everyone.

Coffee Bean Selection

If you want to avoid making mistakes, FrontStreet Coffee suggests choosing medium-light roast coffee beans, which have a higher tolerance for error compared to medium-dark roasts. Currently, the market offers a wide variety of coffee beans with different processing methods and roast levels. As long as they are single-origin coffee beans marked for pour-over use, they can be used for making cold brew coffee.

Dark roast coffee, when extracted with hot water, presents rich coffee aroma with initial bitterness followed by sweet aftertaste; however, when made into cold brew and consumed at chilled temperatures, it mostly tastes of burnt bitterness and carbonization, making it difficult to achieve the refinement of hot coffee.

Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee recommends light to medium roast coffee beans. For a refreshing juice-like experience, you can choose light-roasted washed coffee, such as FrontStreet Coffee's washed Yirgacheffe or FrontStreet Coffee's Kenya AA. For stronger fruit and wine-like aromas, you can use coffee processed with barrel fermentation or honey processing, such as FrontStreet Coffee's Colombia Rose Valley, FrontStreet Coffee's Honduras Sherry, or FrontStreet Coffee's Strawberry Sugar Geisha Blend. However, if you don't like coffee with acidic notes and prefer only balanced "coffee flavor," you can also use FrontStreet Coffee's Papua Paradise Bird for extraction.

Coffee Grind Size

Since the cold brew production process takes place in a low-temperature environment, cold water extracts coffee grounds more slowly compared to hot water extraction. Bitter substances are not easily released, so in terms of grind size, coffee-to-water ratio, and steeping time control, it doesn't need to be as precise as pour-over coffee. Usually, as long as you stay within an approximate range and choose the right coffee beans, you can make a delicious iced coffee with just a few simple steps.

Taking FrontStreet Coffee's daily cold brew production as an example, the coffee bean grind size is slightly finer than pour-over, meaning 75-80% passes through a China #20 standard sieve. Visually, this is approximately the consistency of fine sugar, corresponding to 9.5-10 on the EK43s scale, or approximately 22-26 settings on a hand grinder like the C40.

Steeping Time

In pour-over coffee, we pay special attention to water temperature and time because water, as the main extraction medium, directly affects extraction efficiency. Too high or too low temperatures will change the coffee's flavor. Since cold brew only comes into contact with low-temperature water at 4-10°C throughout the entire process, extraction efficiency is very slow, so it needs to be extended for a certain period to allow more aromatic substances to be released, thereby enabling more thorough extraction of compounds like sugars and organic acids. The resulting coffee has more balanced acidity, sweetness, and body. Generally, the steeping time for cold brew coffee is recommended to be controlled between 8-18 hours.

FrontStreet Coffee once conducted a cold brew experiment with time as the variable, without stirring during extraction to affect the process. A coffee was steeped for 6 hours, 10 hours, 16 hours, and 24 hours respectively. It was found that the 6-hour coffee had too thin a mouthfeel and flat aroma, while the 24-hour cold brew was obviously bitter with signs of over-extraction. The 10-hour and 16-hour groups showed the best flavor performance, with rich aroma and intense mouthfeel.

Coffee-to-Water Ratio

FrontStreet Coffee has noticed that some friends, for convenience, will directly pour coffee grounds and water into a pot and start steeping. For any coffee extraction, the coffee-to-water ratio parameter is involved. Without measurement, coffee becomes like opening a blind box—you never know what flavor you'll get. To ensure better extracted coffee taste, FrontStreet Coffee recommends making cold brew with a ratio controlled between 1:10-1:13. If the concentration is too high, you can add appropriate ice cubes to dilute it.

FrontStreet Coffee's Cold Brew Method

Finally, let FrontStreet Coffee share our cold brew coffee making method! First, for coffee beans, FrontStreet Coffee tends to use medium-light roast coffee beans. For the container, any clean, sealable container will suffice. Prepare 40 grams of coffee grounds, ground to fine grind (85% pass-through rate on #20 sieve), pour into the container, then pour in 480ml of cold water, stir evenly with a wooden stick, and cover with a lid.

After stirring evenly, seal with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator for 12 hours. Then remove and filter out the grounds. After filtering out the coffee grounds, you get clear coffee liquid that can be consumed immediately, or you can put the filtered coffee liquid in a bottle and continue refrigerating for 4 hours for even better flavor and mouthfeel.

Generally speaking, for flavor experience and health safety considerations, whether it's iced drip or cold brew, for any extraction method performed in low-temperature environments, FrontStreet Coffee recommends everyone to consume it within 5 days (counting from the production day).

Important Notice :

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FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473