When the weather is hot and you’re tired, few things can beat drinking a venti glass of Starbucks cold brew coffee. The coolness of the drink will instantly refresh you, and the caffeine content of the drink will give you a much-needed boost of energy. But what can you do if you’re stuck at home and you’re craving for cold brew coffee? Instead of suffering through coffee withdrawal, why don’t you just make your own? There’s no need to pay for Starbucks. Cold brew coffee is in style and here is how to make your own.
Why is Starbucks cold brew so good
To make Starbucks-style cold brew coffee at home, you need to know first why the famous beverage is so tasty. It is known to have a sweet and smooth taste that even non-coffee drinkers enjoy. So what is the secret of this drink? First of all, Starbucks uses quality coffee beans. So that’s the first prerequisite to making delicious cold brew coffee. You also need to know that the popular coffee shop chain brews in big batches. This is how they can keep the taste consistent. Last but not the least, you need to know that it takes 20 hours to make your favorite drink.
Making the Cold Brew
Grinding the beans
The process of making Starbucks-style cold brew coffee is composed only of three steps. The first thing you need to do is to make sure that you have the right grind. In making cold brew, you need a larger grind than usual. Its coarseness is close to that of raw sugar. The reason why you need a larger grind is to prevent the coffee from getting bitter. So you need to change the setting of your grinder to coarse before you start grinding for your cold brew coffee. The best thing for you to do is to grind the coffee by batches.
Adding the right amount of water
The next thing that you need to do is to add water to the coffee grounds. In making cold brew coffee, you need to a higher coffee to water ratio compared to brewing using the drip method. For the Starbucks-style recipe, the ratio is 1:1, which means 1 ounce of ground coffee to 1 cup of water. Drip uses about a half-ounce of coffee per cup of water. So if you are using 8 ounces of coffee, you also need 8 ounces of water. Because of the 1:1 ratio, it is easy to scale this recipe up or down.
Straining the coffee
After 20 hours of cold brewing, your cold brew is ready to be strained. The key is to strain slowly. That’s what the baristas in Starbucks do. In the system that Starbucks use, gravity is left to do its work to separate the brew from the grounds. You will need cheesecloth for the straining process. Do not squeeze or press the coffee grounds. That will only extract the bitter flavor from the grounds. Remember to strain as gently as possible.
And that’s it! You’re now ready to enjoy your Starbucks-style cold brew coffee at home.