Guest Post - Sarah From Weary Shoes

Hi all!  I hope y'all are enjoying your week so far.  I know that I am!  This vacation was exactly what I've been wanting and needing.  It's been all about reconnecting with Brady and trying to leave all the stress of our lives behind for just a bit via beautiful scenery, good exercise, locally brewed beer and adventures galore.

I'm so excited to introduce the next guest blogger!  Meet Sarah from Weary Shoes.  

Get ready to perk up (gah, I'm so bad with puns) and enjoy this great tutorial...

How To Make Cold Brew Coffee

A more flavorful way than brewing coffee and then chilling it. 

When you pull a shot of espresso you're extracting the coffee, with water, heat, and pressure. When you brew coffee you're adding water and heat. When you cold brew coffee, you're just adding water. You're basically ignoring the roast completely, so you'll tend to get less of the acidity, the coffee will be less bitter. At times you'll almost seem to achieve hints of chocolate and even caramel with a cold brew. I rarely sweeten my iced coffee.

To brew cold coffee at home you'll need grounds, a jug of some sort, and either coffee filters and a strainer or a french press.

Step 1: Pick your coffee and roast

I like to use a medium roast rather than a darker roast, there is less flavour mix-up from the roasting process, ie: the medium roast will taste more like coffee beans and less like heat.

Choose your preferred grind:

Different stroaks for different folks, I always tend to use a coarser grind for iced coffee, but that's mainly because I use our french press for brewing. I've found that a finer grind actually produces more flavor, in the end science wins out, with the finer grind there is much more surface area of the coffee for the water to touch. Finer grounds = more extraction for flavour. 

After you have your grounds in either your gallon jug or your french press, you're going to pour water over them. Either room temperature or cold. Once your coffee and water is at a ratio of 1:1 you can stop. I go ahead and stir them and I try and make sure that the grounds are all equally saturated. After about 10 minutes, a solid raft a grinds will tend to form upon the surface, so it's time to go back and stir again making sure that all the grounds will have equal contact with the water.

After this is done I cover it with plastic wrap and I let it sit for 12-48 hours.

The shorter the time the less flavor will result from the brew. 24 hours to me is optimal, for a nice sweet coffee brew. I normally leave ours over night and then I revisit it in the morning.  This also means hiding it overnight, somewhere safe where the cats cannot reach it.

After the 24 hours is up, take the plastic wrap off and seperate the grounds from the coffee. This is why I like using our french press. I can just slip the lid on and slowly put down, and voila. But if you don't own a french press no worries, you can get a strainer and a coffee filter and it'll do the trick no problem. Sometime I even pour the coffee through a filter before we drink it, making extra sure that there are no grounds or silt in our cups.

After all of this, I dilute the coffee that I just brewed with a firm 1:1 ratio. And don't forget to stir it all up. At this point it's fine to go ahead and drink over ice, or pop it in the fridge to have chilled for later.

And there's how we make cold brew coffee. I hope you all enjoy sipping on coffee in this hot heat!

Side note: if you have a compost pile don't forget that you can put your grounds in it. Also, kitties tend to like your coffee, so beware leaving it about while you're getting ready to leave.

Thank you so much Sarah!  Just so you know, Brady is chomping at the bit to give this a try when he gets back home.  It will be especially refreshing during this hot GA summer.

Be sure to visit Sarah's blog Weary Shoes as soon as you can.  Leave her a little love and show her a lot of support...

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PS I'm sorry for the format change yet again but I'm working on some changes still.  Just bear with me.