People usually love cold brew coffee because of its rich, smooth mouthfeel, with just the right acidity and sweetness, and it's neither astringent nor bitter. If made with fermented-flavor coffee beans, cold brew also presents a strong vinous aroma, like drinking a chilled fruit wine.

How is cold brew coffee made?

After many friends become addicted to the taste of cold brew coffee, they buy cold drip towers to try making it at home, but then run into all kinds of questions. Front Street Coffee will first demonstrate how to make cold brew coffee, using our store's production as the standard.

Coffee equipment on the market today is dazzlingly varied, but a cold drip tower still has three main parts: the upper pot that holds ice water (connected to a valve that adjusts the drip rate), the filter cup that holds the coffee grounds, and the lower pot that collects the brewed coffee. What everyone sees at Front Street Coffee's store is the Tiamo HG2713, which has an extra ring-shaped glass distribution tube. You can choose according to your own needs and budget.

For Front Street Coffee's cold brew, the grind size is 80-85% passing through a Chinese No. 20 standard sieve, with an EK43s setting of 10 in-store. We all know that if the coffee is ground too coarse, the coffee flavor will be weak, and if it is ground too fine, it easily causes clogging and prevents normal drainage, which in turn makes the coffee bitter. So choosing the right grind size is very important.

This time Front Street Coffee used the refreshing Asalia coffee beans from Kenya. Because the extraction rate is lower at low temperatures, the barista at Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) suggests using a slightly finer grind size than for pour-over; here, a standard sieve pass rate of 85% is used.

The flow rate is the same as for pour-over, but the cold drip flow rate is calculated by drops per second. The slower the flow rate, the longer the total time required, and over-extraction is also more likely. Front Street Coffee generally uses 7 drops every 10 seconds for extraction, and each person can adjust the flow rate according to their own preference. The coffee-to-liquid ratio is 1:10. Since Front Street Coffee's cold brew is served with ice cubes for dilution, a higher concentration is used. If making it at home, you can extract at 1:10 to 1:12.

To make cold brew, Front Street Coffee grinds 60g of coffee beans into grounds, places a round filter paper in the filter cup, pours in the coffee grounds, and finally lays another sheet of filter paper on top. Then it wets the coffee grounds with water, which can save dripping time and also avoid uneven extraction. Fill the upper pot with an ice-water mixture, that is, ice and water at 1:1, to extract a total of 600g of coffee liquid. Finally, pour the dripped coffee liquid into an airtight container and store it in the refrigerator for 12 hours before drinking. Front Street Coffee generally drips it during daytime business hours, puts it in the refrigerator to chill by evening, and the next day it can be enjoyed with ice cubes added.

What details should be noted for delicious cold brew coffee?

The freshly dripped coffee liquid has a relatively weak aroma and a thinner mouthfeel, so it needs to be stored sealed in a low-temperature environment to ferment, making the coffee's flavor substances cleaner, richer, and fuller, and enhancing the coffee's aroma, sweet aftertaste, and vinous notes. The longer it is stored, the higher the degree of fermentation. However, after more than five days, cold brew actually develops negative effects in the mouthfeel, so it is not better the longer it is kept. Front Street Coffee recommends drinking it within 5 days of refrigeration for the best result. In addition, once the bottle cap is opened, outside bacteria can easily invade and cause the coffee to spoil, so for the sake of ensuring the coffee's flavor and health, it should no longer be drunk. The cold brew coffee served at Front Street Coffee's store has only a three-day shelf life for best flavor.

Regarding the choice of coffee beans, Front Street Coffee believes you can choose coffee beans with different processing methods or roast levels according to your own preferences, provided they are within the best flavor period (2 months). The extraction characteristics of cold brew coffee can highlight the vinous notes, fruit fermentation feel, and fruit aromas in coffee. For example, the cold brew made with Front Street Coffee's Huaxu TOH washed coffee beans presents the clear sweetness of yuzu tea; the cold brew made with Front Street Coffee's Honduras Sherry barrel coffee presents a rich fermented vinous aroma along with honey-like sweetness; and the cold brew made with Front Street Coffee's sun-dried Huakui has lively berry and passion fruit acidity and sweetness, an obvious juicy feel, and a finish with the fresh fragrance of black tea.

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