With summer temperatures heating up, many of us are looking to switch from hot to chilled coffee. We have more options for iced coffee than ever before—between flash-chilled pour-overs, iced espresso beverages, and refrigerated bottled beverages—but many of us enjoy making our own cold brew.
Cold brew is a fantastic iced coffee option because it’s relatively low-effort to brew, it doesn’t require specialized equipment, and once you make your coffee, you can keep it tucked in the fridge for several days before the quality degrades. You can also choose how strong you’d like your coffee, and either make something light and sippable straight up, or a concentrate that you mix with water or milk to dilute to your preference.
Coffee is normally brewed with hot water because hot water is the best solvent for extracting the chemical compounds we enjoy tasting in coffee. The increased kinetic energy in hot water is great at pulling out the acidic compounds that give coffee its complexity and help balance a coffee’s sweetness and bitterness.
That’s not to say you can’t brew coffee well with cold water—obviously you can! But cold-brewed coffee will lack the brightness and acidity that we get from hot brews. That means when you’re choosing the roast profile you’d like to use for your cold brew, options that will still taste good without high levels of acidity will work out better for you.
Dark roast coffees tend to taste robust, rich, and earthy, and the increased porosity of the beans means you will get good extraction from cold water. Our Dark Sumatra is lovely as a cold brew, as is our Dawn Patrol and Vienna Roast.
Medium roast coffee also tends to brew nicely in cold water, and the mellow flavor profiles are often crowd pleasers. Try our Home blend for something with a little chocolate and citrus, or our Breakfast Blend for a smooth and balanced profile.
Light roasts are the hardest to work with in cold brew, but can be the most rewarding. You’ll want a long steep time—typically 20-24 hours—to get the maximum extraction from these very dense coffee beans. While you will miss some of the acidity that light roast coffees tend to provide, you can still pull out gentle fruity notes from the coffee that can make the cold brew taste refreshing. We love our Ethiopia Misty Valley on cold brew, with the strawberry and peach enhancing the coffee’s underlying chocolate notes, and our Ethiopia Basha Bekele has a juicy, fruity of the forest profile that reminds us of a cherry cordial candy.
If there’s a particular coffee you love hot, try brewing it cold and see what you think. Some coffees taste a bit muted and flat as a cold brew, but you might enjoy the richer flavor with less acidity. Experimenting with the roast profiles and brewing recipes is part of the fun—and you’ll learn something from every batch you brew!