If you don't have scales a typical coffee scoop will give you roughly 15-17g of ground coffee.
WHAT IS COLD BREW COFFEE? 🧐
So what makes cold brew so different from a “normal” brew? Heat!
Heat works as the catalyst in extracting all those lovely flavour compounds in coffee and applying that properly is what can sometimes cause a coffee to be too bitter if over-extracted (too much heat for too long) or taste sour and weak (not enough heat).
Whereas in cold brew coffee, we are letting the water do the work for us instead and this is where your grind setting and timing really come into play.
GRIND
Firstly grind is very important with cold brew, just as it is with “hot” brewing, if we have our ground coffee too fine it can cause more bitter compounds to be extracted as the grounds have become more permeable to water. On the other side if we have the coffee way to coarse with big chunks of beans knocking about, we won't be able to extract much at all from that and will end up with very weak brown water.
But once you’ve got the grind setting down (again just slightly coarser than you would grind for French press), we can start to play with timing and this is how long we’re going to leave the coffee to extract. The longer we leave it the more compounds will be extracted from the coffee and different compounds can extract at different rates due to their solubility.
TIMING
Personally I enjoy a shorter brew time of 12-14 hours at room temperature as I find it brings out all the lovely sweet notes along with the floral and fruity flavours I love in a cold brew, whilst minimising bitterness.
Some of you may enjoy increased bitterness in your cold brew though, the bitter compounds found in coffee usually take longer to extract than others so by leaving your cold brew to extract longer (18-24hrs), you can increase the extraction of the more bitter flavour notes and create a “stronger” tasting cold brew. If you are wanting to brew your coffee for the 18-24hr, I would always highly recommend doing this by leaving it covered and in the fridge, as the longer you leave the brew, the longer it has to oxidise and become stale in taste.
