Quote:
Originally Posted by Paulie Walnuts
I am just trying to figure out how to reduce any creamer in the coffee now. Any place I can reduce my sugar I would love to do that. If it means trying cold brew during the winter that's cool. It just gets expensive to buy the already brewed stuff.
I guess how much work does it take to make 4L of cold brew?
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It depends on the kind of person you are. It can be as easy or as complicated as you want (5 minutes or 45 minutes). I'd say it probably takes me a little less time to prep 4L of cold brew than prep 4L of hot coffee. Cold brew just takes 12+ hours to complete brewing and hot coffee less than 12 minutes to brew 4L.
For 4L
Total time: 12 hours - 48 hours (in fridge)
Total actual prep time: 5 minutes - 45 minutes.
Total cost: <$100 (water, ground coffee, 2x 2L cold brewers or 4 1L mason jars with cheese cloth/coffee filter, old french press... whatever) You can also use random things in the house you have already, but I probably wouldn't brew with something that had volume of less than 1L. Use a clean stock pot if you want. But what you use might change the complexity of the bottling and filtering after you're done brewing.
You're mixing coffee grinds and water in a container, tossing in fridge and returning 12-48 hours later depending on what you want. After around 24 hours, you're starting to have a concentrate you can dilute down with water to hit your desired brew if it is too strong. People typically leave their cold brew for around 10-16 hours.
So basically, if you want to be specific to the minute detail for each brew (grinds, weight, ice/no ice, water type etc.) so that you can replicate the perfect brew every time once you find it, then it might take you longer than if you just eyeball it and throw it all together. If you want to be specific in the way you brew and strain, again it's just time. Completely minor variations like metal filter vs cloth or paper filtered can noticeably affect taste. You can buy a 2L cold brew carafe for less than $30 and then you don't have to strain at the end. Or you can use a mason jar and strain at the end after the brewing is complete. Some people want a concentrate they can dilute. Others always strain at the desired flavor (fix the flavor) and leave it chilled for when they want to drink it at a later time.
I'd probably opt to have a few containers together combining towards that 4L. That way you can play with things like grind coarseness, duration, additives etc. at first and if one batch is weird, you have other batches you can drink from while you wait for a new batch to brew. Once you get going, it's really damn easy with the biggest brewing error basically forgetting you had a batch going and returning to something super strong with strange undesired flavors in the later stage of the brew. I think for me that's why I started tinkering around with variations. Some variations was as simple as a few seconds changing the settings on the coffee grinder before dumping water over top of it. Others as simple as swapping the beans. Another is trying different types of milks (animal, nut etc.) and cream content (cream, 2%, skim etc.). I have a friend who puts cream in hot coffee, but it has to be skim milk in cold brew (or vice versa?).
If you tinker, some painters tape and marking date/time of brew, beans and ratio will go a long way in helping you replicate what you'd been doing before.