Cold-Brewed Coffee

For the last several months, my husband has been having some issues with reflux. We’d like to see if we can’t help things out naturally before going to pills, so we’ve done a little research to see what we could change in his diet first.

The coffee maker in the background looks on disapprovingly.

One thing we came across that could be changed was our morning coffee preparation. I had always assumed that coffee was acidic, no matter how it came to be. However, regular hot-brewed coffee is apparently two times more acidic than cold-brewed coffee. But what’s cold-brewed coffee, you ask? It’s exactly what it sounds like!

Though not as fast as coffee made with an electric coffee maker, people claim that cold-brewed coffee is actually tastier and better for you — all you need is a little prep time.

Coffee grounds and cool water sit together for hours and hours (usually overnight) before being filtered or strained. The resulting dark liquid is a “coffee concentrate,” and all you need from there is hot water or cold milk.

Instead of using a contraption made just for cold-brewing and which really can’t be used for anything else, we opted for a cute little French press instead, on the recommendation of this blog post.

I set the water and grounds out overnight, and by this morning we did indeed have a very dark, strong “concentrate,” and the press made it virtually mess-free when I went to strain it. It might take another day or two of experimenting to get the ratios (concentrate, hot water and creamer) just right, but both my husband and I agree that it was a good cup of coffee!

More cold-brewing coffee info:

~ Cold Brewed Coffee at Macheesmo
~ Cold-Brew Experiment at Slashfood (I agree with missing out on the smell!)
~ Home Cold-Brewed Iced Coffee