Cold Brewed Coffee: The New Favourite Coffee Lovers Can't Get Enough Of!

Cold brew coffee and cold drip are quickly becoming a popular drink among Australians. More cafes than ever are offering it as part of their menu now and home brewers are picking up cold brew coffee makers left, right and centre.

The growing market demand means an increase in products hitting the shelves, providing more options for consumers to get their cold brew fix. However, more products means there are a plethora of ways to brew now and it can be hard for us all to keep up.

To this end, we’ve compiled all the best cold brew coffee and cold drip products you need to know about, how to make cold brew coffee using these products and a few facts about cold brewed coffee you might find interesting.

How Do You Make Cold Brew Coffee?

How you make cold brewed coffee will depend on what product you are using. The first important distinction to make is knowing the difference between cold brew coffee and cold drip coffee.

Cold Brew vs Cold Drip – what’s the difference?

Cold brew coffee is a large amount of coffee immersed in cold filtered water for a prolonged period of time i.e. 8-12 hours is pretty standard.

Cold drip coffee is traditionally made in a 3 tiered tower – the top chamber is filled with water, the middle chamber contains the ground coffee and filters, and the bottom chamber catches all the coffee. The top chamber has a valve on the bottom to let water pass through and you use this to set a ‘drip rate’, i.e. 1 drip every second. Cold drip can take anywhere between 3 and 12 hours, depending on the drip rate.

The Toddy set is a home cold brew coffee maker that is super easy to use. To make up to 1L of cold brew coffee at home, add 250g of medium ground coffee to the bucket and up to 1.2L of cold filtered water (if you find the coffee absorbs more than 200mL from your end results, just add a bit extra water). Read instructions on how to brew Toddy.

The Hario Mizudashi Cold Brew Pots come in a 1L and 600mL size, perfect fridge size for home brewers! These come with a permanent plastic mesh filter for easy straining and disposal of your coffee grind. Watch this video for how to brew with the Mizudashi. 

The French Press, also known as plunger, can be used to make a kind of cold brew coffee called cold press coffee. Add your water and coffee grind, and stir thoroughly making sure all the grounds are saturated. Place it in the fridge for around 8 hours or so then plunge and serve!

The cold bruer was released back in 2016 and was a redesign of the classic 3-tiered cold drip towers. What the Bruer creators made was a cold drip that was more compact, less breakable and more affordable – without sacrificing any of the flavour or cold drip goodness. Watch this video on how to brew with the Bruer. 

Tiamo, Yama and Hario make traditional glass cold drip towers. These towers are carefully constructed 3-tiered systems that range from 6-8 cups to 10 cups and even 25 cups! 

The PuckPuck is an adaptor designed specifically for AeroPress. You can purchase the adaptor on its own or the adaptor and water vessel together. Add a paper filter to the cap, add your ground coffee to the AeroPress and place another paper filter on top the grinds. Then attached the adaptor and vessel and add your water. You can turn the PuckPuck to set the drip rate.

Is Cold Brew Coffee Stronger Than Regular Coffee?

Cold brew coffee is actually not stronger than espresso, which is regular coffee for most people. When you compare 30mL espresso and 30mL cold brew, espresso has a higher caffeine content. However, how we drink espresso and cold brew is very different and often means the cold brew coffee is stronger or higher in caffeine. For example, an 8oz or small cup of coffee includes 30mL of espresso topped with milk and froth, while an 8oz or small cup of cold brew can include 60mL or more topped with milk or water. Because you are likely consuming more cold brew coffee than espresso in a single serve, you are likely to get more caffeine or more ‘strength’ from a cold brew coffee.

See our Caffeine Study for more information on how brew method affects caffeine content.

 

What is Special About Cold Brew Coffee?

Cold brew coffee is quite unique to other methods in that it uses cold or room temperature water to brew and extracts based on time, rather than heat. The result is:

• -some components in coffee, which are linked to unfavourable flavours like bitterness or really acidic flavours, are by-passed completely in cold brewing, creating a sweeter smoother brew.
• -the fact that some acidic and bitter components are not soluble at lower temperatures means the brew is less acidic (67% less acidic than espresso according to Toddy), making cold brew coffee much easier on people’s digestive systems. Many people who believe they have problems with caffeine, actually have issues with the acids in coffee and often find they have little to no issues drinking cold brew coffee.
• -air exposure and the drop in temperature in hot brew methods can cause rapid degradation of the flavour. In espresso this occurs as a sour flavour that takes over as the espresso cools, however in cold brew this degradation takes much longer (2-3 weeks if kept in the fridge).

BEAN RECOMMENDATIONS FOR COLD BREW COFFEE: Try our Zanzibar blend for a rich, cocoa and roasted nut flavour, our Kingdom Road blend for a strong and smooth fruity sweet flavour, our latest Seasonal blend for limited edition flavours, or, our latest single origin coffee for unique one of a kind flavours!