When we first came out to LA for our trial run last summer, we left our cold brew coffee toddy back in Brooklyn along with most of our other non-essential possessions. But a couple of weeks into our stay and many dollars poorer from our dependency on the store-bought stuff, we realized that was a pretty big mistake.
For anyone not familiar with a cold brew toddy, it’s essentially a plastic tub with a hole in the bottom of it, which you cork up while the coffee’s steeping, then uncork and filter when it’s done—usually 12 hours later.
So what were two poor, caffeine-adicted, Brooklyn transplants to do?
Luckily, the Internet rushed to drowsy-eyed aid in the form of New York-based writer Rebecca Orchant of the Huffington Post. She penned an article serendipitously not that long before our trip west outlining a simple, cheap method for making your own cold brew at home, sans big plastic tub. All you need is coffee beans, a grinder, water, and a french press.
Feel free to head over to HuffPo to read the full piece. For the less motivated, we’ve pasted Orchant’s instructions below:
Grind your coffee beans to a medium grind (you’ll want to use a little less than double the amount of beans you’d use for hot coffee) and put them in your French press.
Fill the press with water (we use filtered in our house because I like the way it tastes), and give everything a stir to incorporate. It doesn’t matter whether this water is cold or room temperature, it just shouldn’t be hot.
Cover your French press with either foil or the top of the press (just don’t plunge it yet), and leave it on the counter overnight.
In the morning, plunge your press to strain your coffee.
Pour over ice.
Enjoy. Feel awesome. Sit in the sun.
Below, more gratuitous coffee shots.
