cold brew coffee

Have you had cold brew coffee?  I think it's all the rage right now.  I'm not exactly up on a ton of trends, but I have seen cold brew coffee at Trader Joes in the dairy section, so it must be trendy.  I'm ok with that, because cold brew coffee is so good.  I don't like hot drinks particularly, so when I have a cup of coffee in the morning I usually let it sit forever until it's cooled...then I drink half and forget about it.  But with cold brew coffee, it's a different story.

So, you can buy it.  It's a concentrate, and fairly reasonably priced if you go to Trader Joes, but I'm a DIYer.  I think we've established that already, haven't we?  So, you need 3 things to make it.

You need:
Coffee grounds
Water
A glass jar

I use a large mason jar, and add about a cup of ground coffee to the bottom.  Then I fill the jar with water and shake, shake, shake.  Place it in the fridge, and 24 hours later you have coffee concentrate.  Strain out the grounds and store it in a glass jar in the fridge.  Make an iced coffee by pouring some in your cup and then adding milk and sweetener.  You may want to dilute it with some water, it's pretty heavily concentrated coffee, but that's up to you.  You can also use it to make Ca Phe Sua Da (Vietnamese Coffee) which is my favorite coffee drink in the world.

When you're brewing it, you can also add things to it.  You could add a cinnamon stick in to infuse it with that flavor, or some vanilla extract (or a vanilla bean, if you were so inclined) like I did to get some vanilla coffee.  Play around, find what you like, and get your caffeine with a smile.  

So what's the deal with cold brew anyway?  Well, I'm no coffee enthusiast, so I can't say I know really except it's good.  It's a little sweeter, it has less bite to it than hot brew coffee.  I've read that not using heat reduces the acidity, but I can't vouch for that.  Let's just go with...it tastes better to me.  It'll last ages in your fridge...not that it'll take long to go through it.  If you get started now, you could be having some this time tomorrow.