Cold-Brew Iced Coffee

I had heard about the cold-brew method of making iced-coffee a while back and was intrigued by it's simplicity. However, ours being a tea-drinking household, there wasn't a coffee bean around to try it on. Until now. We are having our coffee-loving friends over for summer brunch tomorrow. Won't it be nice to finally be able to serve them coffee when they come over? I always thought that we should buy a small coffee maker, but just couldn't justify the cupboard space when it would get used so infrequently. This method sounds like the perfect solution. Great coffee without a coffeemaker! Who knows? If it's all that, maybe I'll even start liking coffee. Here is the article that evidently started all the hub-bub: New York Times 6/27/07. Only 2 years ago... I'm almost current! nah. (I was going to say that I'm "behind the times" but it's just too darned early in the morning for a pun that bad.)

Cold-Brew Iced Coffee
Makes: enough for 4 drinks

2/3 cup coarse-ground coffee
3 cups filtered water
low-fat or whole milk, for serving

2 mason jars, or other glass containers
2 coffee filters
1 small sieve or funnel

1. Stir coffee and water together in mason jar. Put lid on jar and let sit at room temperature or in the fridge, overnight (preferably 12 hours).

2. In the morning, put the two coffee filters in the sieve or funnel and strain coffee through it into a clean glass container. If not using right away, cover the container and put it in the fridge. The coffee concentrate will keep about a week.

3. To drink it cold, mix equal parts of the coffee concentrate with water or with milk. Pour into a glass with ice and enjoy. To drink it hot, combine coffee concentrate with equal amount of water or milk and heat in the microwave.

My Notes (6/14/09): Used the Raley's brand Sumatra bulk beans (ground coarse using in-store grinder). I had two glasses of this the morning of the party on an empty stomach and too little sleep. For the record, I wouldn't recommend doing that. That being said, it tasted good even without any sugar. Yep. No nasty bitter coffee taste. The coffee drinkers seemed to like it too. One friend had it with a teaspoon of honey in it (I'll have to try that next time). If store-brand beans are this good, imagine what really good beans would do...

My Notes (7/5/09): Made this coffee all last week while visiting family out-of-town. Used French Vanilla Creme flavored coffee beans that were bought and ground at Windmill Farms. Really liked the way it turned out. My family only uses non-fat milk but had some low-fat on hand for us. Low-fat worked fine, but when we ran out of it and used the non-fat milk... disaster. The coffee tasted awful! So now we know: must use at least low-fat milk; preferably full-fat; never non-fat.