cold brew coffee in a canning jar

This post is near to my heart, because of three very important facts:

1. I love really good coffee.
2. I enjoy gadgets.
3. I am, ahem, somewhat frugal in nature.

I've been seeing the Toddy cold-brew coffeemaker for sale at my various coffee shop haunts, and had heard the virtues 0f cold-brewed coffee extolled in several places when I tried a cold-brew concoction myself. Yum. Serious yum. Lots and lots of flavor, not a bit of harshness or bite. But when I looked at the Toddy coffeemaker, it seemed like basically a plastic funnel with a filter and a glass carafe to hold the finished product. For almost $30? There has to be a better way.

A quick internet search revealed the basic concept and water-to-coffee ratio (4 parts water to 1 part coffee). The idea is to stir together the (room temperature, filtered) water and coffee, let it sit for anywhere from 3 to 12 hours, then strain out the grounds.

Enter the wide-mouthed quart canning jar. I put in 3 cups of water, stirred in 3/4 cups of ground coffee (auto drip grind works just fine), covered it and let it sit for 12 hours.

I strained the grounds using a mesh plastic jar lid I had lying around for sprouting, and an ordinary coffee filter in a 6" wire mesh strainer. I poured through the mesh lid into the strainer, which was resting atop another container (to catch the rarefied liqueur of the gods).

The whole process took less than 5 minutes. Once strained, I kept the coffee concentrate in the refrigerator with a lid (to keep other foods from flavoring it or vice versa).

To use the resulting coffee concentrate, add it to a cup with boiling water (1 part coffee concentrate to 1 or 2 parts water). Or pour it cold over ice with 2 or 3 parts cold water for the smoothest iced coffee you've ever tasted.

It really tastes different from auto drip coffee, and is much smoother. I love cream in my coffee, and the cold-brewed stuff really doesn't need it at all. I've used my favorite beans from a local roaster and good old Maxwell House decaf, and they are both improved by the cold brewing process, but the fresh-roasted stuff is far superior to the Maxwell House.

The upsides to canning-jar cold brewing (as opposed to auto drip hot brewing):

• Uses no electricity
  
• Requires no special equipment
• Solo coffee drinkers (like me) can enjoy just one cup whenever they want
• The most rockin' iced coffee ever
• Actual prep time (minus the brewing time) is comparable to auto-drip brewing
  

The downsides:

• May use more ground coffee per cup than auto drip (it's hard to tell, because the end product is concentrated, so it depends on how much you want to dilute it to drink)
• You have to plan ahead several hours (3 hours minimum brewing time)
• It might be easier to make mass quantities via auto-drip (though you could use larger jars and strainers to make a big batch)

I've largely made the switch to cold-brew at home. It may or may not be slightly easier to deal with the Toddy system than my Mason jar setup, but I haven't tried it for a head-to-head comparison. In terms of taste, the results are similar to Toddy-brewed coffee I've gotten at coffee shops.