Recipes
Cold Brew Concentrate: One Batch, a Week of Coffee
Meal prep for coffee: one Sunday batch, a week of ready-to-go iced coffee. Plus how to dial the strength and sweetness.
The short answer. Cold brew concentrate is coffee steeped in cold water at a strong 1:5 ratio: 200g of coarse grounds (about 2 1/2 cups) to 1,000g of water (about 1 quart), for 16 hours. Because it's a concentrate, you dilute it to taste, so one jar covers iced coffee, iced lattes, and even hot cups for 7 to 10 days. The one thing that makes it work is straining twice, sieve then paper, without squeezing the grounds.
Cold brew concentrate is basically meal prep for coffee: twenty minutes of effort on Sunday, and every morning that week your coffee is already made and waiting in the fridge like a gift from your past self. Strong, smooth, ridiculously convenient. Here's how we batch it.
Grind coarse. Steep on the counter or in the fridge, covered.
Concentrate vs regular cold brew
Regular cold brew (a 1:8 ratio) is ready to drink as-is. Concentrate uses a stronger 1:5 ratio so you dilute it to taste, which means one jar does everything: cut it with water for black coffee, pour it over ice with milk for a latte, even mix it into recipes.
What you need
- 200g coarsely ground coffee (about 2 1/2 cups of grounds)
- 1,000g (1 liter) cold filtered water
- A big jar or pitcher, and something to strain with
If you move your grinder to a coarse setting for this batch, purge before you grind the real dose. Grinders hold a gram or two from the old setting, so run a few grams through and discard them. Weigh beans in versus grounds out once and you'll know your grinder's retention for good.
How to make it
1. Combine
Grounds in the jar, water on top, stir until everything's soaked.
2. Steep 16 hours
Counter or fridge, covered. Sunday evening to Monday morning is the natural rhythm.
3. Strain twice
Once through a mesh sieve to catch the grounds, once through a paper filter or cheesecloth for a clean, silky result. Don't squeeze the grounds, that just pushes bitter sediment through.
4. Store
Sealed in the fridge, it keeps beautifully for 7 to 10 days.
How to serve it
- Iced coffee: 1 part concentrate, 1 part water, over ice.
- Iced latte: 1 part concentrate, 1 part cold milk (full iced latte recipe).
- Hot coffee, weirdly enough: 1 part concentrate, 1 part just-boiled water. Smooth and instant.
Dial It Your Way
- Stronger: dilute less (try 2 parts concentrate to 1 part water), or steep the full 18 hours.
- Smoother/milder: dilute more, and don't steep past 20 hours or it turns woody.
- Sweeter: stir in a little simple syrup or maple (dissolves in cold way better than granulated sugar).
Cold water pulls chocolate and caramel and leaves the harsh stuff behind, so medium and medium/dark roasts shine. Rise & Shine makes a syrupy, caramel-forward concentrate; Resurrection Espresso leans full-on chocolate milkshake. Since concentrate is coffee with the volume turned up, specialty-grade beans matter double here.
Coffee after the guide
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