Complete guide to making cold brew at home

This post is the complete guide to making cold brew at home. A previous version of this post referenced the Irving Farm method, but since I originally posted this post I’ve changed my ounces to 12 ounces of coffee to 64 ounces of water. My method follows the same ratios with but I only make 32 ounces at a time so 32 ounces of water to 6 ounces of coffee. I have another post about how to make cold brew at home, but over the past two years I’ve fined tuned my cold brew making style a lot more and landed on the Stumptown method as the best so far.

What you need

• At least a 48 ounce container
• 64 ounce container or multiple containers that add up to 64 ounces
• 6 ounces of freshly very course ground coffee – the fresher the better
• A scale
• Flour sifter, strainer or mesh filter
• Coffee filters
• Chemex or something that you can use to filter the coffee with

Steps for the complete guide to making cold brew at home

Step 1

I start with 64 ounce jar/jug/pitcher/container or whatever can hold at least 32 ounces of liquid. Fill the container with 32 ounces of filtered water.

Step 2

Weigh 6 ounces of the freshest beans you have available. I like Irving Farm’s Cold Brew Blend but I’m using my local Minneapolis roaster Dogwood Coffee’s Rwanda in this tutorial.

Step 3

Grind the beans on the most course setting available. On my Baratza Encore that setting is 40. When the beans are ground you should end up with grounds that look like salt.

Step 4

Dump the grounds straight into the container and stir them until the water and grounds are completely covered mixed together.

Step 5

Put a lid on the jar and let the coffee sit on the counter top at room temperature for 16-18 hours. Once or twice during this time I will stir the grounds a little bit to move things around.

Step 6

After the time is up it’s time to filter the grounds from the water. Take a flour sifter or a strainer with small enough holes so that the coffee grounds cant get through. Place the strainer over another container similar to the container holding your water + grounds. Then pour the coffee and water mixture through the strainer into the new container. This will leave all the coffee grounds in the strainer and your pure coffee concentrate will be in the other container. Let sit for a few minutes to allow all the coffee to completely drain through the strainer.

At this point we’ve just made the coffee is ready to drink, however since it’s concentrate it will be pretty thick and strong. The next two steps are to filter the sludge from the coffee and add water to dilute the concentrate.

Step 7

This step is to filter the coffee and remove any grim and sludge from the coffee. You can use any kind of coffee filter for this step, I use a Chemex and a Chemex filter but I’ve also used a regular Mr. Coffee style filter over a jar to do the same thing.

Add the filter to the Chemex like normal and pour the coffee through the Chemex filter until the all the coffee has been filtered.

Step 8

The final step is to dilute the coffee concentrate. Add 1 part water for every 1 parts of coffee concentrate. Given the measurements of 32 ounces of coffee concentrate, add 32 ounces of water to the mixture to dilute the concentrate. In the end you should end up with 64 ounces of coffee. I dump it all into a single container, but you can mix it up into multiple jars or whatever works for you.

Conclusion

You don’t need to mix the 32 ounces of water to the final concentrate. Add water or milk to taste. Sometimes just having the ice melt in the glass is enough water for some people. YMMV depending on how strong you like your cold brew.