Friday, November 8, 2013

COLD BREWED COFFEE...SO SMOOTH AND RICH!

A good friend of mine has been making cold brewed coffee for years and I have always enjoyed having coffee at her home.  For ages I've been saying that I'm going to start making coffee her way and I finally did! Now I will never go back to hot drip coffee; cold brewed is significantly more smooth (non-acidic), and has a deep coffee flavor.

To begin, I went to Amazon.com and bought the "Toddy Cold Brew System" which cost about $35 with extra filters.

The Toddy System comes with the white brew container, 2 rubber plugs for the bottom of the brew container, the carafe and its lid.
 The System that I purchased also came with extra filters.


Of course, coffee should be made to taste and if you try out this system (which I hope you will!), you will want to adjust the amounts of coffee and water to suit your own taste.  Here is my "recipe."

1.  Place the plug in the bottom outside of the Toddy brewing container.
2.  Place the filter in the bottom inside of the container.
3.  Into the container pour one cup of fresh cold water.
4.  Coarsely grind just under 3 cups of coffee.  We use Kirkland/Costco brand coffee.  Pour the coffee into the container, gently leveling out the top.
5.  Gently and slowly drizzle 3 cups of fresh cold water over the coffee grounds in a circular manner, wetting the entire surface.
6.  Coarsely grind another slight 3 cups of coffee and pour it into the container, gently leveling out the top.
7.  Wait 5 minutes, then gently and slowly drizzle 4 cups of fresh cold water over the coffee grounds.

Here is what it will look like:














8.  Leave this on your countertop and wait 24 hours for the coffee to steep.
9.  Remove the lid from the carafe and place the brew container just above the carafe, pull the plug from the bottom of the brew container in order for the coffee to drip into the carafe.   It will take about an hour for all of the coffee to drip into the carafe.


Here the water has run out of the brew container, leaving only the grounds.  These go into my garden beds!











The coffee now in the carafe is actually a coffee CONCENTRATE.  To make coffee from the concentrate pour about 1/4 cup of the concentrate into your coffee cup, then add boiling water to the concentrate for a rich, flavorful cup of coffee.  I have found that one carafe of the concentrate makes about 32 cups of coffee.
Here are some of the benefits of cold brewed coffee:
1.  It's about 67% less acidic than hot brewed coffee, and you can distinctly notice the difference.
2.  The coffee has a deep, rich flavor.
3.  Making coffee for me is a once-a-week endeavor rather than a daily production.
4.  My husband drinks fully caffeinated coffee and I drink decaf.  Making a carafe of decaf for me and a carafe of caffeinated for him means we are both drinking the coffee we prefer, no compromises.
Thus, the Toddy cold brew system gets four thumbs up in this family!


2 comments:

  1. This sounds very intriguing. I've grown to love coffee but could do without the acidic part. I assume you store the concentrate in the frig, in a covered container? And a cup of boiling water makes it the right temperature for drinking (hot enough?)

    Also (dumb question perhaps!) when you grind the coffee are you ending up with 3 cups of ground coffee?

    It would appear that you do use more coffee beans for the same amount of drinkable coffee using this method...think so?

    I always love your blog. Am I correct that I cannot respond directly to your blog?

    Well, there--that's enough questions to keep you busy the rest of the day! ;-) This might be an interesting item for my Christmas wish-list!

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    Replies
    1. Hi! Thanks for reading my blog! You asked whether you can post comments directly in the blog and the answer is "yes." For the benefit of other readers, I posted your questions here to answer them. First, to reply, click on "Add Comment" at the end of the post. Type up your comment in the box, and in the box that says "Reply as:" click on the little down arrow which will give you the options. It is easiest to post as "Anonymous." The people that subscribe to my blog will then be able to read the additional comments. Now, about cold press coffee and your excellent questions. Store the concentrate in the frig in the carafe. Even though the concentrate is cold, the hot water that gets added ensures a very hot cup of coffee (too hot for me!). Instead of pre-measuring the coffee beans I simply fill my grinder with beans six times. For purposes of my post, I measured the beans that fit in the grinder and each grinder is just short of a cup. Thus, six grinders-full of beans is probably five grinders of ground beans. Since this entire "recipe" needs to be adjusted for personal taste, you would likely make adjustments. Yes, I believe I am using more coffee under this method but I'm really not sure. We like our coffee strong (but not acidic)!

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