Cold Drip Coffee Brewing Time & Grind Settings: Which Coffee Beans Make the Best Cold Drip?

"Cold drip coffee requires ice water to slowly penetrate coffee grounds drop by drop, extracting the essence of the coffee through a process that takes forty-nine hours..."

Let's not get carried away. Making cold drip coffee isn't difficult at all. If there's one challenge, it's the necessity of having a cold drip tower. Of course, many creative enthusiasts have used their boundless imagination and impressive DIY skills to create many interesting and feasible methods (and equipment) for making cold drip coffee.

But since master craftsmen are far from ordinary people, a reliable cold drip tower's main purpose is to provide peace of mind. Once you've completed the preparation, you can leave the rest to the cold drip tower to operate on its own. With an unreliable one, you'd need to frequently adjust the dripping speed manually.

Therefore, with a reliable cold drip tower, making cold drip coffee becomes a straightforward task. Of course, to avoid any mishaps, understanding the necessary parameters is still essential.

Choosing the Right Coffee Beans

"What coffee beans are suitable for making cold drip coffee?" This topic is essentially determined by personal taste preferences. It's similar to saying, "I want to buy pour-over coffee beans. I like citrus acidity, so I'll choose washed Ethiopian or Panamanian beans." Both cold drip and pour-over are just methods of brewing coffee—the flavor ultimately depends on the coffee beans themselves. Of course, when comparing the same beans side by side, cold drip typically produces a cleaner taste with richer flavors and natural fermented wine-like aromas compared to pour-over.

However, FrontStreet Coffee would like to add that coffee beans should be aged longer (at least one week) to allow more gases to escape. This prevents channeling during extraction caused by gas expansion.

Grind Size Considerations

There are two important considerations regarding coffee grind size. If the grind is too coarse, the resistance created by the coffee bed will be small, allowing water to pass through more easily into the lower chamber. With cold water's low extraction efficiency, this results in weak, under-extracted coffee. If the grind is too fine, it's also problematic—increased resistance can cause clogging and water pooling, leading to over-extraction and bitter flavors.

Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee recommends using a grind size that passes through a #20 standard sieve at 80-85% for cold drip coffee. Choose 85% for a richer flavor or 80% for a cleaner taste.

Drip Speed and Techniques

The next challenge is setting the drip speed, which follows the same principle as pour-over flow rate. While different flow rates in pour-over might only differ by 10 seconds, in the extended cold drip process, this could mean a difference of an hour, naturally resulting in different coffee flavors. FrontStreet Coffee typically uses a drip rate of 7 drops per 10 seconds. For example, with 60 grams of coffee grounds, this process takes approximately 6 hours. This can serve as a reference for fellow coffee enthusiasts.

FrontStreet Coffee also has a small tip: before adjusting the cold drip coffee speed, you can pre-wet the coffee grounds in the filter basket. This helps prevent channeling and saves some time.

Post-Brewing Fermentation

After the dripping process is complete, the cold drip coffee is best stored in the refrigerator for 12 hours before consumption. This 12-hour low-temperature fermentation allows the cold drip coffee to develop aromatic fermented notes while intensifying its original flavors. Fermentation is very common in daily life, but uncontrolled fermentation leads to food spoilage.

Low temperatures effectively slow down this process, and FrontStreet Coffee has verified through testing that cold drip coffee made from most coffee beans tastes best after 12 hours of refrigeration.

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473