Since we’re in something of a holding pattern with the Listening Room (we’re waiting on permits and contractors right now), I’m taking a break from 443 to help out my friend Stacey at the New York State Fair. Stacey runs the Chevy Court stage and the new NY Experience stage, and I’ll be doing the hospitality for the visiting artists. I work for Stacey occasionally, but my schedule doesn’t usually allow me to take on a project this big – it’s an intense 2 weeks and she’s coordinating nearly 100 shows. I’ll be managing the catering and shopping for Blondie, Tedeschi Trucks, Ludacris, The Temptations, Smokey Robinson, Counting Crows, ZZ Top and many more. Fun, right? Stacey is such a pro and I always learn a ton every time I do something with her, so I jumped at the chance to join her team before we open 443.
The crew will be working crazy-long hours, so keeping them caffeinated and high functioning is critical. They go through A LOT of coffee, but since the Fair takes place at the end of August it’s often blisteringly hot…not great coffee weather. Someone mentioned how nice it would be to keep iced coffee on hand, so I decided to try out our new Brewista Cold Pro set up that we bought for the Listening Room.
Cold brew is not the same as iced coffee, though.
Iced coffee is simply coffee that is brewed the traditional way, cooled down and poured over ice. Letting brewed coffee sit around causes it to oxidize, which can make the flavor bitter. Cold brew coffee is steeped at room temperature for 12-24 hours, so it’s never exposed to heat and the bitterness is not released. This produces a brew that is less acidic and much smoother. The cold brew concentrate is then mixed with either water or milk and poured over ice. It’s delicious on a hot summer day.
We were a bit nervous about trying it out for the first time. Our cold brew set up makes 7 gallons of coffee, and I was worried it would somehow go wrong and we would waste 7lbs of coffee.
(The original plan was to make 3 gallons of concentrate, but we quickly realized that it wouldn’t work with our larger setup – the water level isn’t high enough to submerge all the coffee.)
It ended up being super easy…Brewista has lots of helpful video tutorials online. You simply fill the bucket with half of your water, place the large filter into the permanent filter, add your coffee, add the rest of your water and you’re set. We used La Colombe Corsica for this batch.
We left it alone for 24 hours, removed the filter with the grounds and poured the resulting cold brew into dispensers. It worked!
Obviously, you can play around with different beans and combinations – I can’t wait to try this with one of my favorite dark roasts. And I’m not sure why I was so nervous about “ruining” it – the process is dead simple.
If you want to experiment and make cold brew at home, you can check out this tutorial:
How to Make Starbucks Style Cold Brew Coffee at Home
Cheers!
