There’s a new beverage which is a perfect refresher, caffeinated, cold, and can be easily be prepared at home too. It’s known as Cold Brew. In its essence, it’s cold coffee, but in these days when everything is artisanal, they’ve taken the humble brew to greater gastronomy.

We Wiki’d “cold brew” and this is what we found.

Cold brew, also called cold water extract or cold press, is the process of steeping coffee grounds in water at a cool or hot temperatures for an extended period. Coarse-ground beans are soaked in water for a prolonged period of time, usually 12 hours or more. The water is normally kept at room temperature, but chilled water is also used. The grounds are filtered out of the water after they have been steeped using a paper coffee filter, a fine metal sieve, a French press or felt, in the case of the "Toddy" brewing system. The result is a coffee concentrate that is often diluted with water or milk, and is served hot, over ice, or blended with ice and other ingredients such as chocolate. Slow-drip cold brew, also known as Kyoto-style, or as Dutch coffee in East Asia, refers to a process in which water is dripped through coffee grounds at room temperature over the course of many hours.

Because the coffee beans in cold-brewed coffee never come into contact with heated water, the process of leaching flavour from the beans produces a chemical profile different from conventional brewing methods.

It’s tasty and great for what we Bangaloreans call summer. Here are some places in the city that serve cold brew (and lower down, links to where you can buy the stuff and try it yourself.)

Oh My Goodness: Also known as DropKaffee with a few retail outlets in the city. They also sell the cold brew coffee as a concentrate.

Image: Oh My Goodness

Café Coffee Day: Café Coffee Day has added Citrus Cold Brew Coffee to their menu. It has an orange tang to the taste.

The Flying Squirrel Micro-Roastery and Café, Koramangala: Their cold brew contains Honey Sun Dried Arabica and some Arabica Peaberry and uses medium to medium-light roasted coffee following a process that delays caramelisation of the bean sugars until the very last moments of the roast.

If you have the penchant to make your own cold brew (instead of conveniently having it in places where they have already done the trial and error), check this video:

https://youtu.be/7WgFkgaoYZM

Even better, here’s a recipe.

Ingredients

250 gm of The Flying Squirrel Cold Brew coffee powder (cold brew grind size-which is a few notches finer than French Press)

1 litre of cool purified water.

Method:

Take a clean steel/glass container. Make sure it does not smell of anything at all. Add the cold brew coffee powder. Add 1 litre of water into the powder. Still the mixture well and let it refrigerate for 12 hours.

Where to buy the grind:

Cold brew coffee is available both online and at stores. Check out these options:

The Flying Squirrel Micro-Roastery and Café, Koramangala, Bangalore (store) or (www.flyingsquirrel.in)

Sleepy Owl Cold Brew Coffee: http://amzn.to/2oO7mu3

Blue Tokai Coffee Karadykan Vienna Cold Brew: http://amzn.to/2piWztf

Koinonia Coffee Roasters Marvahulla estate (Dark Roast) Cold Brew: http://amzn.to/2pGcx0q

And check out this cool looking cold brew coffee maker: http://amzn.to/2ouBRSw