As these Winter days get shorter and the temperatures drop, we wanted to share our method for making hot cold brewed coffee with Cold Bruer. Sometimes, on these chilly mornings, theres no substitute for a hot cup in your hand, and for that less acidic brew, cold brewing is a great way to go.
There's a few methods to heat up your cold brew.
Microwave....Stovetop...Simply adding hot water
The microwave is certainly the fastest, but I've never had great results with it. Seems like my cup of cold brew is always boiling before I know it, and it tastes a little off after that...
The stovetop is good if you want to heat up a bunch of cold brew, but has the drawback of dirtying extra dishes.
My favorite method has been to brew up a concentrate and then add boiling hot water to bring it up to temp and get the right dilution. To get the concentrate, I'll simply add half the water that I would normally use to brew. In this case, the ratio of coffee to water by weight is 1:6 (our normal is 1:12).
Getting specific on the numbers:
- 60g coffee (ground a little finer than I normally would use)
- 350ml of ice water
- 1 drip per second initial drip rate
I'd found that this produces a concentrate that is good to be diluted with an equal part hot water to get the right strength. Diluting the coffee with an equal part hot water also brings the temperature down to about 135 ºF. A great drinking temperature.
If the cold brew is coming out of a refrigerator, the final temperature will be on the cool side, so in this case, I preheat the cup by pre-heating it with hot water for a minute before pouring it out and adding in the cold brew and hot water. This technique gets the final brew temp right where I want it.