Brew Guides
Cold Brew Coffee: The Easiest Method (No Special Gear)
The most patient (and laziest, in the best way) coffee there is. Stir it tonight, wake up to smooth, mellow cold brew tomorrow. Here's my method.
The short answer. Stir 85 grams of coarse ground coffee into 1000 grams of cold water. That's a 1:12 ratio. For 500ml: 40g coffee to 480g water. Steep 12 to 14 hours on the counter or 16 to 18 in the fridge, strain, and serve over ice. It keeps in the fridge up to a week.
Cold brew is the most patient coffee there is, and the laziest, in the best possible way. You stir coffee into cold water tonight, go to bed, and wake up to something smooth, sweet, and ridiculously easy to drink. If hot coffee sometimes feels a little harsh, cold brew is your friend: its pH is actually similar to hot coffee, but it carries less of some of the sharp-tasting acids, so it drinks really mellow.
What you need
- A big jar, pitcher, or even a French press
- Coffee ground coarse (like raw sugar; our grind size guide shows where coarse sits on the spectrum)
- Cold filtered water
- Something to strain with: a fine mesh sieve plus a paper filter, cheesecloth, or the press itself
The ratio
For ready-to-drink cold brew, go about 1 part coffee to 8 parts water by weight: 100 grams of coffee (roughly 1 1/4 cups of grounds) to 800 grams of water, which is about 3 1/3 cups, just under a quart. Ratios do all the heavy lifting in cold brew, and our ratio guide explains how to scale any batch up or down without guessing. Want a stronger concentrate you can stash and dilute all week? We've got a whole cold brew concentrate recipe that uses a punchier 1:5.
800 grams of water is about 3 1/3 cups, just shy of a quart. Steep 12 to 14 hours on the counter, 16 to 18 in the fridge. Scaling up for a bigger pitcher? Hold the 1:8 ratio and the batch size takes care of itself.
Step by step
1. Combine and stir
Coarse grounds into the jar, pour the cold water over, and stir until every ground is wet.
2. Steep 12 to 18 hours
Cover it and leave it on the counter for 8 to 12 hours, or in the fridge for 12 to 18 hours. And don't get greedy, longer is not better. Past about 20 hours it starts pulling woody, bitter flavors.
3. Strain
Pour it through a sieve lined with a paper filter, or just plunge it if you used a French press, then get all the liquid off the grounds.
4. Serve
Over ice, with a splash of cream, or straight up. It keeps in the fridge up to a week, which makes it the perfect Sunday-night move for a week of effortless mornings.
When a batch tastes off
Cold brew is forgiving, but it has faults of its own. Taste first, then match the symptom.
| What you taste | What's happening | The fix |
|---|---|---|
| Woody, bitter | Steeped too long, past about 20 hours, or the liquid sat on the grounds | Stay inside the 12 to 18 hour window and strain fully when time's up |
| Weak, watery | Grind too coarse for the steep, or short on coffee | Check your measure against 1:8, then go one step finer if it's still thin |
| Muddy, silty | Grind too fine, or the strain was too loose | Grind coarser and add a paper filter over the sieve |
The same over- and under-extraction logic behind hot coffee applies here, just in slow motion. If a batch turns harsh, why your coffee tastes bitter covers the causes, and if you're not sure which fault you're tasting, our sour versus bitter guide teaches the difference in one sip.
Changing your grind setting for a new batch? Grind a small pinch of beans and toss those grounds first. Compact home grinders hold 1 to 2 grams of the old setting, so the first grounds out are still the old grind. Weigh beans in versus grounds out once to learn what your grinder holds.
The best beans for it
Cold water pulls out sweetness and chocolate beautifully but mutes the bright, delicate stuff, which is why medium and medium/dark roasts shine here. Both of our blends work great: Rise & Shine goes syrupy and caramel-sweet, and Resurrection Espresso tastes like chocolate milk's grown-up cousin. Specialty-grade beans matter even more in cold brew, because there's nowhere to hide. Start a jar tonight, and tomorrow's coffee is already made.
Terms in plain English
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Cold brew | Coffee steeped in cold water for hours instead of brewed hot in minutes. |
| Concentrate | Cold brew made stronger (like 1:5) so you can dilute each glass to taste. |
| Coarse grind | Particle size like raw sugar. Keeps the long steep from turning muddy or bitter. |
| Steep | Letting grounds sit in water so flavor dissolves out. Here, 12 to 18 hours. |
| Ratio | Parts coffee to parts water by weight. 1:8 means 100 grams of coffee to 800 grams of water. |
| Purge | Grinding and discarding a small pinch of beans after a setting change so old grounds clear out. |
Coffee after the guide
Ready to brew with Coffee Crate?
Explore certified specialty-grade coffees selected for quality, freshness, consistency, and flavor.