Cold Brew

Oh my Lordy, isn’t it hot out? Heat and I don’t always mix well together. My poor gentleband has to feel my impatience when I’m hot and living in Florida; it happens quite often. Every summer, I ask him why we still live here. I love where we live, I just can’t get over why people live in such a hot place. I wanted to share something that was perfect for the heat, and that was ice cold cold brew. It is simple and delicious; it just requires a little bit of patience. It is a nice pay off because it usually makes a large amount and lasts in your fridge for a few days. It’s an incredibly smooth, highly caffeinated, and less acidic cup of coffee- all great things!

There’s a few things I want to note about my cold brew! First is the obvious obsession I have for beakers. Am I slightly wanting to post a picture of Beaker from the Muppets? Yes! Why is that even a question? I won’t though. Over New Years’, my gentleband and I went to New York for the first time! It was quite the experience. One of the places we went to while we were there was a bar that served all their cocktails in beakers. To say I was obsessed is an understatement. That place was called, Yours Sincerely; if you ever find yourself in Bushwick in Brooklyn, check this place out.

The coffee I used was a local roastery here in Jacksonville called Bold Bean. I love Bold Bean. They opened a few years ago a few miles away from where we live and since opening, they’ve expanded like crazy. I love their coffee, and clearly a lot of people do for them to expand in the way they have. The coffee used is from Rwanda. The tasting notes Bold Bean gave were brown sugar, mulling spices, and chamomile. Honestly I got it for the chamomile. It’s always fun seeing what they tasted and what I taste. Some people think it’s absolutely ridiculous, and sometimes when I talk about it out loud, I feel silly. But have you ever been to a coffee cupping? They are quite serious and it’s honestly a ton of fun. I’d suggest taking a look at this coffee wheel from Counter Culture and start expanding your tastebuds.

Last thing I want to talk about before going to the how to is our Handground– a coffee grinder. The last restaurant I worked at, I wore many hats. One of the hats I wore was responding and filtering through the emails that got sent to the general email account. One of them was an email from Handground. It was them inviting the restaurant to have their product on our shelves. I think they thought we were a coffee shop, while we were more a restaurant. Their product didn’t fit quite right. However, I personally was very intrigued. We decided to get it, not really knowing they were still in development stages and we were buying their product on Kickstarter. Not ever buying anything off of Kickstarter before, we had no idea how long it’d actually take. I’d say it took a year before we ever saw it. Well when it finally came, we were excited! We use it almost every morning to make coffee… well, the gentleband does. My work hours don’t always allow for me to have coffee at home. The gentleband works from home, so he gets to use it all the time! I wanted to feature them because we truly do enjoy our Handground. Knowing I wanted to feature them, and that I’d have to use them to grind my coffee, I decided to check to see if they had a good Cold Brew recipe – and what do you know, they did, and it even let me know which setting to use with their product. Not only is there a recipe, there is a great conversation about cold brew and different versions of cold brew. Check that link out here! I highly encourage you to check out their post, but I will post the recipe for what I did exactly at the end of my post. Their recipe makes 2 gallons worth of cold brew. I did not need that much for just the two of us, haha!

 

132 grams coffee-look for local and freshly roasted
1060 filtered water

What you need to do!
∙Your coffee should be whole bean, so you’ll need to grind it. Handground’s recipe provides you with the perfect setting. If you do not have Handground, go ahead and look for a coarse grind setting on your grinder.
∙Place coffee into some sort of container; it’ll need to be large enough to cover with the amount of water that you have. I used an empty growler I had.
∙Saturate your ground coffee with water
∙Cover and let sit! The amount of time your coffee sits is up for debate. Handground says 18 hours but I did 16 hours. I like my coffee to be a little bit lighter. I’ve seen some people who let their coffee sit for 12 and others let theirs sit for 24. Totally up to you! I guarantee you won’t be making this just this one time.
∙After 16 hours, filter out the coffee grounds so you can start drinking!
∙We put this into another empty growler we had and stuck it in the fridge. My size amount made half a gallon, which is a great portion for us. It’s been nice to have on hand when I often head into work at 3 am!