Cold brew is coffee made by steeping coarse-ground coffee in cold or room-temperature water for 12 to 18 hours, then straining it. For a concentrate, use 100g of coffee per 500ml of water and dilute it one to one when you drink it. For a ready-to-drink batch, use about 80g of coffee per litre of water and pour it straight over ice.
No heat, no machine, no skill. A jar, a spoon, a sieve and a fridge. The catch is that you have to think about it the night before, which is the entire reason it has not taken over the world.
| Recipe | Coffee | Water | How to drink it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Concentrate | 100g | 500ml | Dilute 1:1 with cold water or milk (or 1:2 if too strong) |
| Ready-to-drink | 80g | 1 litre | Pour over ice as-is. No mixing. |
Both recipes use a coarse grind and a 12–18 hour steep. Quantities scale in the tables below.
The short version
- Concentrate: 100g coffee to 500ml water (1:5). Dilute 1:1 with water or milk to drink.
- Ready-to-drink: 80g coffee to 1 litre water (about 1:12). Serve as is.
- Coarse grind, 12–18 hours, then strain through a fine sieve or paper filter.
- Keeps in the fridge, sealed, for a few days.
What is the best cold brew ratio?
There are two ratios, because there are two ways people make it. Both are our recommended starting points and both can be nudged.
Concentrate (1:5)
100g of coffee to 500ml of water. This makes a strong syrup that keeps well and takes up half the fridge space. Dilute it one part concentrate to one part cold water or milk when you pour. If that is too strong, go 1:2. If you want it to double as an iced latte base, keep it at 1:1 with milk.
| Concentrate | Coffee | Water |
|---|---|---|
| Small jar | 50g | 250ml |
| Standard jar | 100g | 500ml |
| Big jug | 200g | 1 litre |
Ready-to-drink (about 1:12)
80g of coffee to 1 litre of water. This comes out of the fridge at drinking strength, like a cold filter coffee. No mixing, no maths at 6am. It uses more fridge space per glass, which is the trade.
| Ready-to-drink | Coffee | Water |
|---|---|---|
| 500ml | 40g | 500ml |
| 1 litre | 80g | 1 litre |
| 2 litres | 160g | 2 litres |
If you are using tablespoons instead of scales, a heaped tablespoon of coarse coffee is roughly 6–7g. A litre of ready-to-drink needs about a dozen. It looks like a lot going in. It is meant to.
What grind should you use for cold brew?
Coarse. The same grind you would use for a French press: rough breadcrumbs, not sand. Cold water extracts slowly, and a coarse grind gives it a long, gentle extraction that finishes clean. A fine grind over-extracts on the long steep, clogs the strainer and leaves you with a gritty, bitter jar.
If you grind at home, go to the coarse end of the range. For other methods and water-in ratios, see how much coffee per cup. If you buy pre-ground, choose the French Press grind on any FARCOFF coffee. It is the coarsest of our six grinds and it is the right one for this.
How long should cold brew steep?
12 to 18 hours. Twelve is the short end and gives a lighter, brighter result. Eighteen is the long end and gives more body and more sweetness. Somewhere around 14 to 16 hours suits most people, which conveniently means "put it together after dinner, strain it after breakfast".
Past about 20 hours the improvements stop and a woody, flat flavour starts creeping in. It will not hurt you, but it is not better. Set a timer, or write the start time on the lid.
Should cold brew steep in the fridge or on the bench?
Either works. They behave differently.
On the bench at room temperature, extraction runs faster. Aim for the shorter end, around 12 to 14 hours. Flavours tend to come out a little rounder and fuller.
In the fridge, extraction runs slower. Aim for the longer end, 16 to 18 hours. The result is a touch cleaner and lighter, and the jar is already cold when you strain it.
Food-safety-wise, the fridge is the more conservative choice, especially in an Australian summer when "room temperature" can mean 34°C. If you brew on the bench, keep the container covered and move it into the fridge as soon as it is strained.
How do you make cold brew, step by step?
- Weigh the coffee into a large jar, jug or bowl. Coarse grind.
- Add cold or room-temperature water in the ratio you have chosen. Use water you would drink; the coffee is going to taste like it.
- Stir until every ground is wet. Dry pockets floating on top do not extract. Stir again after ten minutes if a crust forms.
- Cover and wait 12 to 18 hours.
- Strain. A fine mesh sieve first to catch the bulk, then a paper filter, a clean tea towel or a nut-milk bag if you want it clear. Do not squeeze the grounds; that pushes bitterness and silt through.
- Bottle it. A sealed bottle or jar in the fridge.
That is the whole thing. The only technique is patience.
How long does cold brew last?
A few days in the fridge, sealed. It will be at its best in the first two or three days and drift towards flat and slightly sour after that. Concentrate holds up a little longer than ready-to-drink because there is less water in it, but neither is a long-term proposition. Make what you will drink in the working week.
Keep it away from light, keep the lid on, and if it starts to smell winey or vinegary, it has gone. Pour it out and start again.
Why does cold brew taste sweeter and less acidic?
Hot water is a fast, aggressive solvent. It pulls out the sugars and the pleasant acids quickly, and then keeps going into the heavier bitter compounds. Cold water is slow and selective. Over 12 to 18 hours it extracts plenty of sweetness and body but noticeably fewer of the sharp acids and bitter compounds that hot brewing brings out. The result reads as smoother, rounder and sweeter on the tongue, with much less of the bright edge you get from the same coffee brewed hot.
Cold brew also gives up some of its aromatics along the way. The perfume you get from a hot pour over is mostly missing. What you get instead is chocolate, caramel and body. That is not worse. It is a different drink, and for a 35-degree afternoon it is usually the right one.
One thing it does not do is take the caffeine out. Cold brew, especially undiluted concentrate, can carry more caffeine per glass than a flat white. Dilute accordingly, or use decaf for the second jar.
Which FARCOFF coffee is best for cold brew?
All of our coffees suit espresso, pour over and filter equally well, and in our experience cold brew is just as forgiving, so the honest answer is: the one you like. Cold brewing favours sweetness and body over brightness, which means the chocolatey coffees tend to sing and the fruity ones turn softer and juicier. Three starting points:
- Brazil at /products/single-origin-brazil: sweet chocolate and hazelnut at a medium roast. This is the cold brew coffee for people who want it to taste like cold brew.
- Smooth Coffee at /products/blend-2-smooth-coffee: caramel, milk chocolate and a little cardamom, and built to take milk of any kind, dairy or plant. Concentrate at 1:1 with milk is the move.
- Colombia Decaf at /products/decaf-colombia: caramel, brown sugar and toffee with a red apple finish. For anyone who wants a cold one at 8pm and sleep at 10.
Order the French Press grind if you do not grind at home, and the 1kg bag if the fridge is going to have a permanent jug in it. Every bag is freshly roasted in St Peters, Sydney, carries its roasted-on date and batch number, and reaches its peak flavour up to four weeks after roasting. A litre of cold brew a week gets through a kilo comfortably inside that window.
Try it with FARCOFF
The easiest way to find your cold brew coffee is to make three jars. Around the World is three 250g bags of Colombia, Brazil and Ethiopia in the grind of your choice. Choose French Press, steep each one for 16 hours, line them up in the fridge, and let the week decide. Coffee for people with things to do, made while they were asleep.
Freshly roasted. Roast date on every bag.