How to Make Cold Brew Coffee

Name: Making Cold Brew Coffee in a French Press
Prep time: 5 min
Total time: 5 min
Yield: 3
Ingredients: 75 grams coarsely ground coffee (if choosing pre-ground, opt for French Press grind size); 600mL fresh, filtered water at ambient (room) temperature; 1 French Press coffee maker. We like anything from 6 to 10 cups, but any size bigger will work too; 1 spoon; 1 gram scale

Posted on May 23, 2022

Making Cold Brew Coffee in a French Press

Rated 5.0 stars by 1 users

Servings

3 to 5

Prep Time

5 minutes

Cook Time

16-20 hours

Coffee is incredibly versatile and something as simple as brewing with different temperature water can completely change your taste experience with it.

In recent years, cold brewing has become more and more popular. Using ambient temperature water for long periods of time tends to bring out flavors that are mellower, sweeter, and less acidic. Paired with ice, you end up with a convenient, refreshing, and (maybe more importantly) caffeinating beverage perfect for hot weather.

Here, we'll give you a very simple recipe using something you may already have in your cabinet: a French Press coffee maker. We think that two of our blends - Lokahi and Makahiki - are best suited for cold brewing, as they give you the deep chocolate sweetness you'd expect, along with a little refreshing acidity that helps each to sparkle in the summer sun!

This recipe brews a concentrate. As-is, this is a 1 to 8 ratio. To get to the strength of a typical cup of coffee, we recommend pouring in an equal amount of ice or water.

Example:

Pour out 150ml of concentrate
Pour in 100 mL of water
Use 50g of ice

Author:

Honolulu Coffee

Image of Making Cold Brew Coffee in a French Press

Ingredients

75 grams coarsely ground coffee (if choosing pre-ground, opt for French Press grind size)
600mL fresh, filtered water at ambient (room) temperature
1 French Press coffee maker. We like anything from 6 to 10 cups, but any size bigger will work too
1 spoon
1 gram scale

Directions

Pour coarsely ground coffee into your French Press
Tare your scale
Take your water and pour in just enough to completely saturate the grounds (somewhere between 120mL and 200mL), then stop
Take your spoon and stir - or simply swirl rather aggressively - to get all of your grounds evenly wet. If there are dry pockets of grounds, your brew will not end up as even or well-extracted
Pour in remaining water up to 600mL
Cover brewer with the lid (do not plunge!), and put in a place away from sunlight
After 16-20 hours, remove the cover and break any remaining "crust" from the brewer. Wait a minute or more for all of the grounds to sink to the bottom
Slowly - very slowly - plunge the filter down until it sits just above the rested coffee bed
(Optional) Pour out all of the coffee into a new decanter / jar to ensure the brewing process ends.
Enjoy! We recommend diluting with an equal amount of water to get something close to the strength of normal drip coffee (a 1:16 coffee to water ratio).

Recipe Note

This brewing process usually yields about 450mL of drinkable coffee concentrate.

We like Lokahi and Makahiki for cold brew, as their blend components yield a cold brew that's deliciously sweet and still has a bit of acidic zip and zing!