Tuesday 29 May 2012

Cold Brewed Coffee!!!!

As we've had such nice weather recently (and I'm really hoping it lasts because I'm going camping at the weekend!) I've been craving nice cool drinks- and cold brewed coffee is perfect for me (nice and cooling, and lets me keep up with the caffeine habit). I've never made it before but it looked pretty easy, and very yummy! so I started it off on Sunday night (thoroughly confusing my sister when she found the pot of odd muddy stuff in the kitchen on Monday morning...)

I also wanted an excuse to use my lovely new measuring cups- I got two sets from ASDA, the larger one has 1 cup (and smaller) measures and cost £2 and the smaller set has tablespoons and smaller, and was £1.75. I love the bright colours!





 Part 1: Cold brewing

You need:
  coffee grounds
 cold water

For every 1/3 cup of coffee you need 1 1/2 cups of cold water- for my first batch I just used 1 1/2 cups of water just in case I didn't like it or I did something wrong, but I've just started off a triple batch- this one made about 3 pints of iced coffee- so it's very easy to scale up.

Place the coffee and water into a container- I used a Tupperware (from IKEA) with a secure lid, but you can seal it with cling film if necessary.

Give it a stir, then seal the lid (or cling film) and leave it in a cool place for about 12 hours (no stirring).


For some reason I found it hilarious that it separated when I took the second picture.


Part 2: Straining

After 12(ish) hours your coffee should be brewed, and it's time to separate the coffee grounds from the coffee.

Mmm... looks like mud!


Take a bowl and fine meshed sieve, and pour the coffee through- this should separate most of the larger coffee grounds.

By the way I didn't throw my used coffee grounds away, I'm keeping them for a DIY exfoliator recipe- expect a post about it soon (assuming it goes well!) :)




Then you need to strain the liquid through something much finer to remove the finer coffee grounds- if you have coffee filters that would be ideal, and I've heard that damp kitchen roll (a couple of layers) works well, but I improvised with a muslin cloth (yes, one that came with a hot cloth cleanser) over my sieve (which I rinsed out first)




The good thing about the muslin cloth is that
you can squeeze the excess liquid out.


This could take a while to strain through properly (I went away for 1/2 an hour while it was draining through) but you should be left with totally filtered, delicious coffee!

  




You could use it straight away, but I had no ice and I wanted to make sure my coffee would be properly chilled so I poured it back into the Tupperware container, and chilled it in the fridge for a couple of hours.


Part 3: Making iced coffee drinks :)


You will need:

Coffee mixture
cold water
milk or creamer
sugar (I prefer caster sugar, it dissolves better in cold liquids)








The coffee itself is pretty strong, so I'd recommend watering it down quite a bit before drinking- I filled my glass about 1/3 full of coffee, then topped it up to about 3/4 full with cold water.

You can then add in milk (or creamer etc.) and sugar to your own taste- I added about 1 1/2 teaspoons of sugar.




As many many people have also commented, cold brew coffee doesn't have any of the bitterness that regular coffee does- because it's brewed in such a 'gentle' way- and it really is delicious (just as good as a Starbucks frappuccino!) and refreshing :) I think it would be awesome with some of those drink syrups too (I must get some!)
I know it takes quite a while in waiting time, but it tastes SOOO good so it's well worth it; plus if you make it in larger batches the coffee will keep in the fridge for up to a week.




                                                                                                xGretalRabbitx


p.s. I'd love to be able to tell you which recipe I used, but as usual I read lots- and used bits from many different recipes! :)

4 comments:

  1. I love ice coffee so am totally gonna have to have a go at this one day! x

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Same here! Defintely do- it's really really easy and the results are pretty dran yummy :)
      xGretalRabbitx

      Delete
  2. I've recently been cold-brewing myself ice teas... so this sounds really interesting! I might try this, once this batch of iced tea is done! :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ooh sounds good- I bet it's a fairly similar process :) You really should- it's awesome!!
      xGretalRabbitx

      Delete

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