George's Wonder Blog
Food, Finance, Work-at-Home and other things that interest me.

After my last post about DIY Iced Coffee, I realized a couple of things. First off, I didn’t make Iced Coffee, I made Chilled Coffee. Second, I missed a very important detail… cold brewing the coffee. Third, it was so good, I was sure it didn’t matter, but wanted to try cold brew myself.

After I had my hand at French Vanilla chilled coffee (hot brewed, then chilled overnight), I did some more reading for ideas to try out. That’s when I ran across the idea of cold brewing coffee on this National Coffee Association of the USA page about Cold Brewed Coffee. Cold brewed coffee is smoother, has less caffeine and is less acidic. For me that means I need to find a way to boost the caffeine in the cold brew because I drink coffee partly because the the taste and partly for caffeine’s nootropic and stimulant effects. I also read plenty of other articles on the subject and now I’ve done a poor cold brew. Let me explain.

In typically excited fashion, I ran off to the kitchen and tried it out before doing much reading. The worse mistake I made this time was to use our tap water. Its not that I’m some elitist preferring bottled water because my wallet is just overflowing with $$$, its that out tap water is really horrible. Normally, the only way I will drink our tap water is if its in brewed coffee – our tap water really is THAT bad.

COLD-BREWED COFFEE BENEFITS

• just leave it in the refrigerator to brew (some recipes)
• smoother flavor than regular brewed coffee
• less acidic than regular coffee

DIY COLD BREWED COFFEE BENEFITS

• just leave it in the refrigerator to brew (some recipes)
• save money (compared to regular brewed coffee or commercial iced coffees)
• save money (wow, I like that one!)

So now its time for me to look for some very reasonable way to either filter our water (Brita, etc) or buy better tap water at the store. Plus I’ve done some more reading about cold brew preparation since I haven’t settled on using a french coffee press, a Toddy Coffee maker, I’ll probably be using a pitcher, plus something to filter the grounds out like cheese cloth.

As I checked out KitchenDaily’s The Best Bottled Iced Coffee: Our Taste Test Results my thoughts wandered back to the last time I bought a Starbucks Double Shot (#4 on KitchenDaily’s list). The store-bought Starbucks iced coffee was about $2.60. That evening I was walking around Walmart with my wife enjoying the sipping my prized Starbuck caffeine injection. But man, that was almost $3 for only 6.5oz of iced coffee!

MAKE YOUR OWN ICED COFFEE

I decided to give DIY iced coffee a try and my first shot was pretty good. You’ll need these common ingredients you probably already have around your home if you are a coffee drinker:

INGREDIENTS LIST
brewed coffee (cold or hot)
french vanilla creamer
sweetener

You can use any brands of the above that you like but I used Folgers Classic Roast, Coffee-Mate Sugar Free French Vanilla, and store brand Sweet-n-Low (saccharin). If your coffee is cold, or cold and old its okay because we’re going to heat it up anyway.

So, if your coffee is cold heat it up in your microwave, or if you prefer on your stovetop. Pour your hot coffee into your favorite coffee mug. Add your creamer and sweetener to taste then stir well using the heat of the coffee for a better mix.

Now just put your coffee in your refrigerator until well-chilled and you are ready to go with a tasty caffeine injection of your own.

NEXT: DIY Chilled Coffee