Cold Brew Coffee is a very popular drink in the coffee industry by the general public and coffee professionals alike. In the most basic sense, cold brew coffee is made by taking coffee grounds that have been ground very coarse (french press setting coarse), then steeping those coffee grounds in cold water for 24 hours. After the ground coffee has completed the steeping process, you then take it and strain the grounds from the now cold brew coffee. This process extracts a lot of the sugar and the chocolatey notes from the coffee grounds. Depending on how you make it, the cold brew can be concentrated and used in replace of espresso for iced drinks or it can be brewed more diluted and used to pour directly over ice and consumed black.

At Rugged Coffee, we like to make our cold brewed coffee slightly different than most. We use hot water in the beginning to start extracting more of those bright acidic flavors, then we add cold water to the mixture and let it brew for 24 hours to extract those sweeter flavors. The result is a complex and decadent coffee beverage. We like to brew our cold brewed coffee in a more concentrated form so that we can use it to make our cold latte’s and when we add water, it makes a delicious black cold brew.

When brewing your cold brewed coffee, you want to make sure that you use good quality water, the better the quality of water you use, the better your coffee will taste and the same goes for the grind. The better the grinder you use, the more uniform the coffee will be ground to resulting in a more even extraction of those coffee grounds. Even extraction is key to all coffee brewing, whether you’re making cold brew, brewing hot french press, pour over coffee, or even just the good ol’ Mr. Coffee. Feel free to reach out if you have any brewing questions, we love to help the Rugged community brew better coffee.