Cold-Water Coffee by Toddy

The testers at Cook's Illustrated had a different stance on that product. They felt the brew was too weak. Someone could probably fix that if they left it in the sun to heat it up as it brewed.

I recently did a podcast of making cold water coffee with the Toddy for First Crack podcast #36 - The First Home Roast of Spring.

My wife and I have used the Toddy method now for about a year. We are coffee addicts and we put away our drip coffee maker. Here are the tips:

1: Try different beans - We have found that Baba Budan beans are the best for caf and an ethopian blend for decaf. YMMV - but the advice is to try different beans than you might if you were using a drip coffee maker.

2: Use a professional grinder. We have the coffee shop grind them. It produces a uniform grind which is essential for this brewing method.

3: Its the all in the Grind. Using a product already ground for electric drip will NOT work. It will taste terrible. If you must buy pre-ground - make sure it is ground for french press machines (a courser ground than electric drip ground), but the best is to just have them grind it for you in the industrial grinders.

4. Enjoy. It is so flexible and tastes great. Minus the acidity. We use a kettle to boil water. Then mix the concentrate 1 to 3 with the boiling water and put it right into a vacuum thermal carafe, Stays hot for hours without the scorching effect of a hot plate. Tastes as good at the end as it did when you first make it. Plus you can just microwave it if it gets too cold (microwaving this stuff doesn't affect the flavor much at all).

Save your $35...you don't need to buy a special brewer to make cold brew coffee! Mix 1 lb. of coffee with 1 quart of water and let it steep for 12 hours; when it's done, just pour it through a filter of your choice -- a standard automatic drip coffee filter would probably work. Possibly several layers of cheesecloth would work, too.

Got a Toddy for the holidays last year. It is wonderful. I mostly use the Community Coffee "Coffee & Chicory Blend" (a New Orleans tradition) and find that it gives a beautiful cup of coffee. For those who find the coffee weak, it is a matter of finding not only the right bean but the right blend of coffee concentrate and water. All I can say is experiment. Try also blending with Soy Milk (vanilla flavored is wonderful) for a not quite so bad for you treat.

RE: Dustins' comment. I purchased a used Kitchen-Aid professional style grinder, this is the sort with the stainless steel opposing toothed wheels that work like an old fashioned grain mill. It produces eqivalent quality to professional blends. CAVEAT: these are expensive (over $120) and peo[ple often return them out of disdain for the mess they create. A small amount of grounds ineveitably become suspended by static electricity and leave a gritty circle beneath the discharge point. It's unavoidable but worth it.

One of the main benefits of the system is that de-acidified coffee is far better health-wise than normal coffee, which can do a number on intestinal villi.

http://www.organicanews.com/news/article.cfm?story_id=26

It'll still wreak havoc on your kidneys, though. :)

I've been making coffee this way for 10 years or so. It's really tasty and allegedly contains more caffeine.

All you need is a cheesecloth (fabric), tie up some ground up (not too fine) coffee and throw it in a gallon container of water and wait 12 hours.

For heaven's sake if you really want to hug a tree don't buy this chunk of plastic! The basic method works great in a recycled jar or jug.

I work at a cybercafe where we used to use Toddies, but they've since been discarded in favour of a simpler method. Something to remember: don't let the soaked grinds sit once you're done with them. If you don't dump them out right away, they get gross, fast. We had one try to take over our stockroom once; it wasn't pretty.

I tried soaking the french press style grounds in a jug and then passing it through a standard coffee filter. For reasons I think relating to gravity and mesh size the filter completely choked up after about a quarter cup of liquid passed through. I re-tried using cheescloth and succeed in getting a full cup of liquid before it choked up again. I tried a couple more combinations and managed to drench my counters and floor in soaking wet ground coffee.

After walking away from the hardening mess (which stained everything it touched) I procured a water bottle full of Toddy-brew from a friend. I can't say I was particlarly impressed. It was a very mild brew at best and really didn't have the richness of a good pot of french press(even when I added very little water).

However I would strongly reccomend it to anyone who does not especially enjoy the gut churning or acrid flavor of the darker roasts. Which seems to be what everyone else is saying anyway.
-W

More years working in a coffe shop than I care to think about gave me a fair amount of trial and error experience with toddy techniques. (AKA: cold process or cold press) The method as close to perfection for us is quite simple and requires no real special gear. Although the toddy makers a cool and work well.

Our "recipe" is pretty standard. 1lb of coffee to 1 gallon of ice water. Our brewing is done in a stainless steel stock pot (any non-reactive container does the trick, though.)

Steps:

1. Grind your beans as coarsely as possible. (We found a medium roast bean yields the most flavor and most high-test product)


2. Place 1lb. of ground coffee in the pot


3. Pack your measuring cup full of ice (we had a gallon measure, but you could split it up with a smaller measure)


4. Top off the measure with cold water to bring the water mark to a gallon.


5. Add to the pot and cover.


6. Let steep at room temp. for 12 hours


7. Important: Give the pot a stir right before you filter the liquid (this knocks most of the grounds to the bottom and makes for easier filtering)


8. Pour through a fine wire mesh strainer into another pot or through a big funnel into some other storage vessel.

Notes: We found that using a paper filter or cheesecloth filtered a bit too agressively. A wire stariner combined with a coarse grind does a really good job and leaves as much of the good stuff in tact. If smaller bits get through, they will fall to the bottom of your storage vessel.

This recipe yields a final product that is equivalent to double-strength coffee. Drink it undiluted over ice for a good jolt of caffeine.

Also, the grounds are an excellent soil amendment or addition to compost.

Give me a French Press any day that is the real way to make coffe that is COFFEE. I have tried and used all of the machines and methods on the market and not one of them compairs with the coffe made in a French Press, you just have to experiment with your grounds until you find a blend that you like..I prefer a blend of Community Coffee Dark and Columbian to smooth out the flavor

This cold-brewed coffee "syrup" is just awful. A friend use to make it, and added hot water to make a cup. Yeah, it's very low-acid, alright, but it's ACID that gives good coffee that "edge." This syrup tastes very much like coffee that has been on the burner too long, and the heat has converted the acid to alkali. That's what makes it taste "beany" and "syrupy." The best way to make coffee IS some drip method. I use a Melitta filter. All Mr. Coffee type makers make coffee with the same mechanism. The water gets superheated, which draws out bitter oils and alkaloids, regardless of price and sophistication. Hey, you want ice coffee that tastes like stale coffee, be my guest.