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As handsome guys and pretty girls living in a city like a furnace, cold drinks are a must-have in the fridge. Cold brew coffee can satisfy both the craving for cold drinks and the pursuit of caffeine. However, cold brew coffee bought outside is expensive! The money for three cups of cold brew coffee is enough to buy a bag of beans, and a half-pound bag of coffee beans is enough to make four cold brew coffees, each time 500 milliliters. Next, Front Street will teach you how to save money and make cold brew coffee at home.
 
Cold brew coffee is actually divided into cold water immersion type and ice water drip type. Simply put, it is cold brew coffee and ice drip coffee. The cold brew coffee served at Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) stores is only ice drip coffee, so let's start with ice drip coffee!

   
Friends who have visited Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) stores all know that Front Street stores have a complete set of equipment for making ice drip coffee, which looks like a tower when assembled, and looks very cool. In the following explanation of the method, Front Street believes that "cool" is not enough to describe it; we need to use "professional"!

 
Ice Drip Coffee
 
Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee)'s method for making ice drip coffee:
 
Front Street uses 60 grams of coffee powder as the benchmark, adopts a grind size of about 85% passing through the Chinese standard No. 20 sieve, with a powder-to-water ratio of 1:10, and takes 6 to 8 hours to extract about 600 milliliters of coffee liquid.

1. Place a circular filter paper at the bottom of the powder cup and moisten it with water.

2. Put the ground 60 grams of coffee powder into the powder cup, and press it with a heavy object similar to a tamper to make the surface of the coffee powder flat and the interior a bit compact.

3. Place a circular filter paper on the surface of the coffee powder to avoid a powder pit caused by long-term dripping.

4. Add cold water to achieve a pre-infusion effect.

5. Fill the water container with a 1:1 ice-water mixture.

6. Adjust the throttle valve to 7 drops every 10 seconds.

7. After the coffee liquid has been extracted for 6 to 8 hours, pour it into an empty bottle, seal it, and refrigerate overnight.
 
The characteristic of ice drip coffee is that the taste is richer and smoother, presenting the best original flavor of coffee. Many coffee lovers are very fond of ice drip coffee. In this weather where everything feels greasy, Front Street will choose some coffee beans with more obvious acidity to make ice drip coffee. For example, Front Street's Kenya Little Tomato beans are a very good choice.
 

Front Street Kenya Little Tomato Coffee Beans
Country: Kenya

Region: Thika
Altitude: 1550m～750m
Variety: SL28, SL34
Processing method: K72 washed processing

 
When Front Street's Kenya coffee beans are used to make ice drip coffee, the flavor is clean and the acidity is bright. It has an obvious fruity feel when drunk, with a clear cherry tomato acidity and aroma on the entry, grapefruit peel flavor in the middle, and berry aroma and caramel sweetness in the aftertaste.
 
Cold Brew Coffee
 
Front Street also understands here that it is impossible for friends to have space at home to place such a large piece of equipment, so cold brew coffee is the simplest for the general public.Generally speaking, to make cold brew coffee, you still need to grind the coffee beans. This kind of work can be directly handed over to the merchant when purchasing coffee beans, which not only saves the adjustment of grind size, but also saves the time of weighing beans and grinding powder. If you want to make the preparation steps more convenient, Front Street suggests that you can buy some special tea brewing bags, so you only need to put the coffee powder in and tie them in advance, and take them out for direct use when making cold brew.

1. Put the cold brew coffee bag into the container used for extraction, and take out the hanging string.
2. Add 100 milliliters of room-temperature water or cold water to the container (the recommended powder-to-water ratio is 1:10; the powder-to-water ratio can be adjusted according to personal preference).
3. Shake it a bit to fully moisten the coffee powder in the cold brew coffee bag.
4. Place it in the refrigerator and refrigerate for 8 to 12 hours.
5. After 8 to 12 hours, take out the cold brew coffee bag.
6. Shake well and enjoy.

   

How long should cold brew coffee be soaked?
 
As early as two years ago, Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) conducted experiments on how the duration of cold brew coffee affects its flavor. Using the same coffee beans, the same grind size, and the same powder-to-water ratio, the extraction times were set to [4 hours], [8 hours], [12 hours], and [24 hours], and the conclusions were as follows:
 

[4 hours] The overall taste is relatively thin, with sufficient aroma, but after filtering out the coffee grounds, bottling, and refrigerating for fermentation, the aroma is weakened a lot. The extraction yield is the lowest among the four groups, and the extracted flavor is not complete.

[8 hours] The flavor is relatively fresh and clean, and the extracted flavor is a bit more than the [4 hours] group, but due to the shorter extraction time, the layering of the flavor is not rich, and the overall sense is average.

[12 hours] The layering of the flavor is rich, and the complexity is higher than the previous two groups. Some inert molecules in the coffee beans can be extracted into the coffee liquid in small amounts.

[24 hours] The flavor is the most complex and intense. Due to the long soaking time, the components in the coffee beans are fully extracted, and the saturation of the water is also the highest among the four groups.
 

As the extraction time increases, the resulting coffee extract becomes more intense and the bitterness becomes more obvious; as the extraction time shortens, the acidity of the coffee extract becomes more obvious; and after all the extracted coffee liquids were refrigerated and fermented for one day, it was found that the group with a soaking time of [12 hours] was the best choice, because even after fermentation, the flavor was still good.
 
But these are only reference data shared by Front Street for everyone. The specifics still need to be adjusted according to personal taste and the flavor state of the coffee beans.
 
Should cold brew coffee be soaked at room temperature or in the refrigerator?

Friends who often read Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) articles all know that subtle changes in water temperature also have a certain impact on coffee. The most commonly seen is: the lower the water temperature, the slower the coffee extraction rate, and the longer the time needed to achieve the ideal extraction yield. But as the extraction time extends, more substances are extracted from the coffee, and some substances with poor flavor will also be extracted into the coffee liquid.

 
Pour-over coffee and ice drip coffee are two very extreme and very obvious examples.
 
Because pour-over coffee uses water temperature close to boiling hot water (for light-roast and medium-roast coffee beans, Front Street uses a water temperature of 90 to 93 degrees, while for dark-roast coffee beans, Front Street uses a water temperature of 86 to 88 degrees), Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee)'s baristas generally control the entire extraction time for pour-over coffee to about 2 minutes.
 
Ice drip coffee uses an ice-water mixture. In junior high school physics books, everyone was taught that the reference temperature of an ice-water mixture is 0 degrees. Without considering the temperature increase caused by the ice water absorbing heat as it drips down, ideally speaking, the water temperature of ice drip coffee is 0 degrees. Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) store baristas start preparing to make ice drip coffee when they first start work, and when it is almost time to get off work, they bottle, seal, and refrigerate the extracted coffee liquid. The whole process is roughly 6 to 8 hours.

  
In addition, based on the literal meaning of cold brew coffee, it is better to soak cold brew coffee in the refrigerator.

The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.