30 Days of Summer at Modern Times Coffeehouse: Day 6

We wrote about iced coffee back in 2010 on this blog, and our opinion hasn't changed much, so we won't say a whole lot more about it except that we are STILL making iced coffee here at Modern Times by the cold-brew method and it's still one of the best selling cold drinks of the summer that we offer.

If you'd like to try cold brewing at home, we recommend buying the Toddy system because it's an all-in-one container and reusable filter system that's very easy to set up and easy to clean. If you would like to do it without this equipment, you can find the method online how to do it and it should work fine. There's a couple rules you should follow however:

1) Get the coffee ground in a commercial grade or at the least, a burr grinder. Grind coarse, but not the coarsest setting. We grind a few notches coarser than you would for drip brewing. Burr grinders crush the beans into uniform pieces, which will extract more evenly and fully. Blade grinders chop the beans unevenly, resulting in over-extracted fine particles and un-extracted coffee bean chunks.

2) Saturate the grounds slowly by layering the grounds and water in alternate batches. When you do it this way you do NOT need to stir the mixture as a way to saturate the grounds. All this does is agitate the mixture and will probably cause the "blooming" coffee crust to erupt over the top of the container by the end of the brew time.

3) Double filter the concentrate when it's done, once in a sieve and then the second time through cheesecloth or a paper filter. The first filter is to get all the grounds out, the second will clarify the concentrate of bitter oils and fine particles.

4) Experiment with different coffee blends and single origins. You will be surprised how the cold brewing process pushes some coffees' delicate flavors into the forefront. Fruity, nutty, and/or sweet coffees work well here.

You can also enjoy cold-brew warmed up if you feel like a hot coffee but don't want to brew a whole pot. It keeps in the refrigerator for a week. I also recommend pairing the concentrate with ice cream for the most delicious (and addictive) coffee milkshake!