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If someone hands you a cup of hot coffee and a cup of iced coffee, you will taste two different flavors. This is because when making coffee, changing the temperature affects how many soluble substances water extracts. Unlike hot water at high temperature, cold brew coffee is black coffee made by mixing room-temperature water with coffee grounds evenly, then placing it in the refrigerator to extract. Because the entire process takes place in a low-temperature environment, the acidic substances and bitter substances in the coffee are not easily released, so the coffee's taste is more balanced, with less sourness and off-flavors.

So, how should you make a delicious cold brew coffee? Next, Front Street will demonstrate how to make a standard cup of cold brew coffee.

Step 1: First, prepare a cold brew bottle. If you do not have a cold brew bottle, that is fine too. Just find any container large enough, or any clean cup, and then prepare plastic wrap to seal it.

Step 2: Pick a coffee bean you like and grind it to make cold brew coffee. We used Qianjie Costa Rica Mozart, a bean with multiple flavors such as sweet floral notes, raisin and orange, suitable for various brewing methods including moka pot, coffee machine and pour-over. You can place an order at the Qianjie Tmall flagship store or the Qianjie Taobao store.

A cup of cold brew coffee uses about 20g of coffee grounds. Here, weigh 60g of Qianjie Mozart coffee beans, then grind them to the size of fine granulated sugar, corresponding to a passing rate of 82-85% on a No. 20 sieve. The grinder used by Qianjie is an EK43s, with a corresponding setting of 9. If using a C40 hand grinder, the grind setting is 22. You can adjust according to your own equipment.

Step 3: Pour the ground coffee into the built-in filter of the cold brew pitcher and add room-temperature drinking water. (This time the ratio used is 1:12, that is, 60g of coffee grounds: 720ml of water; you can adjust according to your preferred strength. Note that the water level must be high enough to soak the coffee grounds.)

Step 4: Tighten the lid and put it in the refrigerator to chill for 8 hours. (Note: refrigerate! Not freeze!)

Step 5: Take out the coffee that has been chilled for 8 hours and filter it, so it tastes cleaner

Step 6: After filtering it with filter paper, it is ready to drink! Add ice cubes for an even better taste~

How long can the finished cold brew coffee be kept at most?

Generally speaking, for the sake of flavor experience and health safety, whether it is ice drip or cold brew, any extraction method carried out in a low-temperature environment, Qianjie recommends everyone drink it within 5 days (counting from the day it is made).

If you brew it the way past articles from Qianjie did, using warm water to make cold brew quickly, its best-tasting window is shorter. Because the higher water temperature extracts flavor compounds to a greater degree, warm-water cold brew is more prone to growing microorganisms in the fridge than cold brew made with room-temperature water, so Qianjie considers it best to finish it within 2 days to avoid gastrointestinal discomfort.