Cold brew coffee, simply understood, is coffee extracted with cold water. Because it is very simple to make and has outstanding flavor and mouthfeel, cold brew coffee has always been a favorite that most people keep at home. But cold brew coffee is not without its drawbacks. For example, the long time required to make it is the biggest flaw preventing it from "ruling" coffee lovers worldwide!(That's an exaggeration)Making a bottle of cold brew the traditional way basically takes at least 8 hours. This is not just the steeping time—cold brew, like ice drip, also needs a certain amount of "aging" before it can develop its full flavor. Unless there is already cold brew made in advance in the fridge, when you want to drink a cup of cold brew coffee, making it on the spot always means waiting most of the day(unless you order takeout). So many impatient friends ask: "Is there any way to shorten the making time of cold brew coffee?"Of course there is! The reason cold brew coffee takes so long to make is that the water temperature used for extraction is too low, so the kinetic energy of the water molecules is weak and cannot quickly dissolve the flavor substances in the coffee like hot water can. So as long as we slightly increase the initial water temperature during steeping, we can improve the extraction efficiency of the water and thereby shorten the extraction time. This is a method Front Street Coffee shared not long ago.But many friends are not satisfied with just that, because now we often see posts on Xiaohongshu like: "In just one minute, you can make high-sweetness cold brew."Because it takes little time and many bloggers have shared it, friends often ask Front Street Coffee at the store what kind of method can make high-sweetness cold brew in such a short time.First, we need to know that the factors affecting extraction efficiency are not only time and water temperature, but also grind size, water amount, and extraction method! The "one-minute high-sweetness cold brew" mentioned earlier is achieved by changing the extraction method.The specific method is very simple: use a hand press or an espresso machine capable of cold-water extraction to perform the extraction. In this way, just like making espresso, the assistance of pressure as high as 9 bars allows the flavor substances in the coffee to be quickly dissolved out by cold water.Front Street Coffee conducted a related experiment last year, adding ice water to a hand-press coffee machine to extract coffee. The result was just as Front Street Coffee expected: in just a few minutes, a cup of cold brew coffee that looked pretty good was obtained.But it only looked pretty good! Drinking it was completely like a cup of water with coffee flavor. Apart from the water temperature meeting the requirements of cold brew coffee, the mouthfeel, taste, and concentration were completely inferior to cold brew coffee obtained by long steeping. If you want to say it was sweet... it was indeed quite sweet, because almost no flavor was extracted, so it tasted light and sweet, somewhat similar to the taste of apples.Front Street Coffee also tried using a finer grind than for espresso and more water(hot extraction 1:2 coffee-to-water ratio, cold extraction 1:10 coffee-to-water ratio)and a longer time(hot extraction 30 seconds, cold extraction 3 minutes)to increase extraction efficiency. But even so, the coffee machine still could not use cold water to extract a cup of strong-tasting coffee. The reason is simply that the water temperature is too low!It is not only because the kinetic energy of cold water is insufficient, but also because cold water cannot soften the coffee fibers in a short time like hot water can,and the concentration saturation point is also low. This is why, even with the assistance of pressure, the coffee machine cannot rapidly and abundantly dissolve the flavor substances in coffee. And this is also why cold brew coffee needs time compensation to obtain relatively complete flavor.In summary, everyone can understand that although this method can indeed make a cup of "cold brew coffee" in a short time, the cold brew made this way is merely superficial. Whether in taste or mouthfeel, it is completely different from the cold brew we know. If you want to shorten the steeping time of cold brew, then you might as well, as Front Street Coffee mentioned at the beginning, slightly increase the initial steeping water temperature. This can not only shorten the extraction time, but also allow the flavor substances to dissolve more completely~But then again, since you are already using a coffee machine, why not just directly extract a cup of espresso and then add ice to make iced coffee? Isn't that more convenient?
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
