CoffeeJuice.com News http://coffeejuice.com/ CoffeeJuice.com News en-us http://coffeejuice.com//blog-entry/143/Summer-demands-a-cold-cup-of-joe.html http://coffeejuice.com//blog-entry/143/Summer-demands-a-cold-cup-of-joe.html <![CDATA[Summer demands a cold cup of joe]]> When summer hits, just as I swap my boots for sandals, my morning coffee gets a makeover, as well.

During past summers I’ve made iced coffee at home, but my efforts were pretty much always a bust. Either I wouldn’t plan sufficiently so that when I poured the piping hot coffee over ice, it quickly turned into a disgusting glass of lukewarm backwater. Or, even if I remembered to refrigerate a cup of joe the night before, the next morning it still tasted like exactly what it was: old, stale coffee.

Enter my morning hero and latest obsession: cold brew.

Cold brew refers to a process involving coarsely ground coffee beans steeped in cold or room temperature water for 12 to 24 hours. The slow steeping process extracts the flavors of the coffee while leaving behind the bean’s acids and oils. The result is a clean, smooth-tasting concentrate that is served hot or cold, straight or with ice, and diluted with water, milk and sugar. If coffee is at all harsh on your stomach, cold brew is for you.

While cold brew has been around for ages, up until a few years ago, it wasn’t easy to find, with few coffee shops selling it and fewer stores selling in-home machines.

Nowadays, take your pick from the flashy $250 Yama Cold Brew Tower, which resembles a beautiful piece of laboratory equipment turned moonshiner rig, to the more budget-friendly, humble-looking $36 Toddy Cold Brew System, which has been on the market since 1964.

If you’re not ready to relinquish counter space to yet another kitchen gadget, try cold brew at a coffee shop. Local Coffee serves its cold brew on tap for $3.35. Don’t let the sign reading “iced coffee” fool you; what’s on tap is, in fact, cold brew. The Brown Coffee Co. also has cold brew which can be ordered “neat” or “rocks” — or, for $4.75, try the fabulous “dirty” which is cold brew mixed with the perfect amount of organic cane sugar and milk.

There also are a number of decent ready-to-drink, bottled cold brew options out there such as Chameleon, an Austin-made cold brew, or another Austin option, Coffee Juice, which was developed by Strother Simpson, the son of Todd Simpson who invented the Toddy Cold Brew System. Coffee Juice, selling for $2.99 a bottle, hit the market just last month and is available at H-E-B Central Market, as is Chameleon for $3.49.

When I first tried Coffee Juice, it had a tangy lightness to it that I couldn’t quite place until I read the label: cold brewed coffee, cane sugar, whole blueberries and lemon juice. Ah, the name made more sense, it really is coffee plus juice.

Coffee that is also juice, coffee makers that look better suited for mad scientists — right now, it might all sound like too much. Yet this season when we have our first 95-degree morning, and your steaming cup of coffee looks more like a punishment instead of a reward, trying a cold brew might prove just right.

]]>
Wed, 01 Jul 2015 21:14:08 UT
http://coffeejuice.com//blog-entry/142/Hot-for-cold-brewed-coffee.html http://coffeejuice.com//blog-entry/142/Hot-for-cold-brewed-coffee.html <![CDATA[Hot for cold brewed coffee]]> When summer hits, just as I swap my boots for sandals, my morning coffee gets a makeover, as well.

During past summers I’ve made iced coffee at home, but my efforts were pretty much always a bust. Either I wouldn’t plan sufficiently so that when I poured the piping hot coffee over ice, it quickly turned into a disgusting glass of lukewarm backwater. Or, even if I remembered to refrigerate a cup of joe the night before, the next morning it still tasted like exactly what it was: old, stale coffee.

Enter my morning hero and latest obsession: cold brew.

Cold brew refers to a process involving coarsely ground coffee beans steeped in cold or room temperature water for 12 to 24 hours. The slow steeping process extracts the flavors of the coffee while leaving behind the bean’s acids and oils. The result is a clean, smooth-tasting concentrate that is served hot or cold, straight or with ice, and diluted with water, milk and sugar. If coffee is at all harsh on your stomach, cold brew is for you.

While cold brew has been around for ages, up until a few years ago, it wasn’t easy to find, with few coffee shops selling it and fewer stores selling in-home machines.

Nowadays, take your pick from the flashy $250 Yama Cold Brew Tower, which resembles a beautiful piece of laboratory equipment turned moonshiner rig, to the more budget-friendly, humble-looking $36 Toddy Cold Brew System, which has been on the market since 1964.

If you’re not ready to relinquish counter space to yet another kitchen gadget, try cold brew at a coffee shop. Local Coffee serves its cold brew on tap for $3.35. Don’t let the sign reading “iced coffee” fool you; what’s on tap is, in fact, cold brew. The Brown Coffee Co. also has cold brew which can be ordered “neat” or “rocks” — or, for $4.75, try the fabulous “dirty” which is cold brew mixed with the perfect amount of organic cane sugar and milk.

There also are a number of decent ready-to-drink, bottled cold brew options out there such as Chameleon, an Austin-made cold brew, or another Austin option, Coffee Juice, which was developed by Strother Simpson, the son of Todd Simpson who invented the Toddy Cold Brew System. Coffee Juice, selling for $2.99 a bottle, hit the market just last month and is available at H-E-B Central Market, as is Chameleon for $3.49.

When I first tried Coffee Juice, it had a tangy lightness to it that I couldn’t quite place until I read the label: cold brewed coffee, cane sugar, whole blueberries and lemon juice. Ah, the name made more sense, it really is coffee plus juice.

Coffee that is also juice, coffee makers that look better suited for mad scientists — right now, it might all sound like too much. Yet this season when we have our first 95-degree morning, and your steaming cup of coffee looks more like a punishment instead of a reward, trying a cold brew might prove just right.

]]>
Wed, 17 Jun 2015 10:11:43 UT
http://coffeejuice.com//blog-entry/141/A-Barista-In-PJ%27s.html http://coffeejuice.com//blog-entry/141/A-Barista-In-PJ%27s.html <![CDATA[A Barista In PJ's]]> Gourmet brew is invading the home, with countertop machines that can deliver fancy espresso drinks and foamy milk--even freshly roasted beans. But for the serious coffee fiend, the goal is still to come up with a decent cup of joe without having to shed pajamas. So we subjected the new crop of coffee makers to the ultimate test: a week's worth of this addict's morning cravings. 

Monday: I assembled the Hamilton Beach BrewStation the night before and, ignoring the "6:15" illustration on the box, set the timer for a more indulgent 9 a.m. The machine drip-brews into a plastic reservoir that dispenses a cup at the push of a button. Other companies make carafe-style drip brewers with a built-in bean grinder--another good anti-mess innovation--but the BrewStation made a richer, less acrid cup of coffee. 

Tuesday: Early to bed and early to rise make a reporter more-or-less able to figure out how to use a two-chambered automatic vacuum brewer. Hot water rises up into the grounds, where it roils pleasingly until cooling air below sucks an eruption of richly brewed coffee through a filter and back into the carafe. Bodum and Black & Decker make similar versions. Pick Bodum for design appeal and brewing time--about 8 minutes--Black & Decker for price ($30 cheaper, with a 14-minute wait). 

Wednesday: Hump day is a good day for a strong jolt, so I went with the Krups Moka Brew. A heating element forces pressurized steam through tightly packed grounds, emulating the silver stovetop espresso brewers favored by Italians and artsy types. The system delivers the most robust coffee of the lot, just this side of true espresso. 

Thursday: Ugh, a headache. And no, I don't want to talk about why. Running late, so I opt for the ultimate in automation. Melitta and Keurig both offer single-cup machines that pump hot water through premeasured coffee packets in under a minute. But when it tastes as if it came from a vending machine, does convenience really matter? 

Friday: Definitely too much coffee this week, and my stomach needs a break. Enter the Toddy Cold Brew system. "Brewing" with cold water--plan ahead, it takes 12 hours--extracts less acid and different flavors than hot brewing. Drinking it black, my spartan brother dismissed it as "diner coffee without the 'ouch.' " My more voluptuary girlfriend, coaddicted to milk and sugar, says she'll never drink anything else. Guess that means it'll be sharing space with the Moka Brew, my pick for the best of the lot. 

Note: U.S. News & World Report published the following editor's clarification in their 2/16/04 issue:

"Although it takes 12 hours to make a batch of espresso-like concentrate for the Toddy Cold Brew system mentioned in "A Barista in PJ's" [January 26], it can be refrigerated up to 10 days and used to make a fast cup of coffee. The user mixes one part concentrate to three parts boiling water."

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Mon, 02 Mar 2015 09:11:34 UT
http://coffeejuice.com//blog-entry/140/Lifestyle-%7C-Consumer-Tech-Cold-brewed-coffee-at-home-fills-a-tall-order.html http://coffeejuice.com//blog-entry/140/Lifestyle-%7C-Consumer-Tech-Cold-brewed-coffee-at-home-fills-a-tall-order.html <![CDATA[Lifestyle | Consumer Tech: Cold-brewed coffee at home fills a tall order]]> Iced coffee, how I used to mock you. Make my coffee hot, black and flowing from a French press or espresso machine, thank you very much.

Cream and sugar is fine -- for children. Once you start messing with the temperature and natural flavor of coffee, it's a slippery slope ending in frothy, icy, sickeningly sweet concoctions.

You see, I'm fussy about coffee. I'm the purist sipping a steaming hot cup, even in the dog days of summer.

Then, one particularly sweltering day in Chicago last month, I broke down and had an iced coffee at a local Caribou Coffee; a large with a vanilla soy topper and one packet of raw sugar, to be precise. I was stunned. This velvety smooth, deeply refreshing, richly satisfying beverage was nothing less than a revelation in caffeine delivery.

The Caribou employee explained that this was a typical, if somewhat extreme, reaction to their cold-brewing process.

I had previously heard about cold-brewed iced coffee's popularity in New Orleans, where they add a little chicory to the mix. When I started digging deeper for information, I came across coffee blogs with postings from coffee freaks, all extolling the many virtues of the cold-brewing process.

The most common claim was that the cold-brewed beverage contained little of the acid and harsh taste of its traditionally prepared counterpart. Dozens of folks who could no longer enjoy coffee at all due to sensitive stomachs, acid indigestion or some form of gastroesophageal reflux were back on the java train thanks to cold-brewing.

Even if you have guts of steel, you couldn't get a better tasting brew, they said.

I was sold on the concept. Now I wanted to put the process to the test at home.

Cold Toddy

The most frequently recommended system is the Toddy Cold Brew System ($35, toddycafe.com) available online and at Seattle's Best coffee shops. While home espresso and coffee machines have been getting increasingly complex over the years (witness the rise of the super-automatic espresso machine), the Toddy is the very essence of simple, utilitarian technology. Included in the kit is the brewing container, two reusable filters, a small rubber stopper and a glass carafe.

Setup couldn't be simpler. Wet the filter, fit it in the bottom of the container and follow the steps to add the ground coffee and water. Don't follow my example and forget the stopper in the bottom!

Cold-brewing is not for a quick coffee fix, at least initially. At least 12 hours are required to let the water draw out all the goodness from the ground coffee. I whipped up a batch in the early evening for my hopeful enjoyment the next morning.

Sweat the details

A few words on ingredients. Good tasting water is essential for good tasting coffee. If your tap water tastes like rust, opt for filtered or purified water. The quality of coffee is obviously of critical importance. Caribou recommends a darker roast, though any coffee from a reputable company will do. The grind must be coarse, just like what you'd use for a French press, or you'll end up with a gritty brew.

Being the picky freak that I am, I ground a medium-dark roast Ethiopian bean using the sublime Breville Conical Burr grinder ($100, brevilleusa.com). Each batch of Toddy brew calls for 1 pound of coffee, which will quickly overwhelm one of those little blade grinders. The Breville not only grinds beans with Swiss precision but handles half-pound batches, making measurements a snap.

So let's cut to the chase. Twelve hours later I was yanking the stopper out and watching the inky black fluid slowly drain into the carafe. In about 15 minutes the carafe was full of cold-brewed concentrate.

Toddy suggests a ratio of between 2 to 1 and 3 to 1 (two or three parts water and or milk to one part concentrate). Being hard core, I went with equal parts concentrate and water. In went a healthy dose of ice and a generous helping of vanilla soy milk.

The result was simply intoxicating. I had a flash of my first sip of espresso at the tender age of 14. Velvety smooth, a hint of bitter chocolate and full-bodied flavor enveloped me. The absence of bitterness or biting, acidic finish was nearly as striking as the gorgeous flavor.

Something different

During my research I came across a most curious device. If the Toddy is efficiency, the Coffee Snob Cold Drip Coffee Maker ($85, coffee-snob.com) is pure extravagance (see photo on C1). Coffee Snob's kit looks like a 19th-century mad scientist's prop.

A glass globe is filled with ice, producing a slow, steady supply of chilled water as it melts. The spigot below is adjusted to allow one drop of water per second to drip into the ground-coffee container. This process continues at a glacial pace for six to eight hours as the small carafe fills with concentrate.

The Coffee Snob device is the kind of curio that will catch anyone's eye, and the cold-brewed concentrate is nearly indistinguishable from the Toddy's delectable elixir.

If you're making coffee for more than one, it's worth noting that one brew cycle with the Toddy produces about 48 ounces, while the Coffee Snob batch is half that. Cold-brewed concentrate can be stored in the refrigerator for up to two weeks without losing any of its taste. Running out of my new favorite drink is the last thing I want happening, especially when it takes hours to prepare.

When summer fades, or you're in the air-conditioned deep freeze at work, the concentrate apparently makes equally delectable hot coffee. Just dilute to taste with boiling water and enjoy.

I haven't tried the hot variety yet, but after choking down a cup of office coffee today, I'll be packing a flask of cold-brewed in my bag from now on.

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Mon, 02 Mar 2015 09:11:03 UT
http://coffeejuice.com//blog-entry/139/Feeding-Frenzy-%7C-Cold-Brewed-Iced-Coffee.html http://coffeejuice.com//blog-entry/139/Feeding-Frenzy-%7C-Cold-Brewed-Iced-Coffee.html <![CDATA[Feeding Frenzy | Cold Brewed Iced Coffee]]> After the second New York Times article in as many months on cold brewed iced coffee, I figured I had to give it a shot. Cold-brewed coffee is the traditional method for making iced coffee in New Orleans and has also been bantered about in online food forums like Chowhound and eGullet for several years. Instead of brewing coffee with hot water and letting it cool, you combine coarsely ground coffee with cold water, set on a counter for 12 hours and then strain it. For your labors, you get coffee syrup that can be refrigerated for several weeks. Any time you desire an iced coffee, you pour a shot of syrup into a glass and top with water or milk, and ice.

I'm a true coffee fanatic — I freshly grind beans and set up a self-timed coffee maker every night right before bed. In the morning, I wouldn't dream of getting up without my first cup or two in bed. Although I have this deep love (or addiction?) of coffee, I have never liked iced coffee (except for Vietnamese Ice Coffee!) — it has always tasted burnt to me.

So, I was eager to put cold-brewed iced coffee to the test and see if I could be swayed. By nature, I'm a gadget girl, so I used the Toddy Cold Brew Coffee System.

And the results? Cold-brewed coffee is UNBELIEVABLE — all the hype is justified. The purported beauty of cold-brewed coffee is that it has 67% less acid than hot-brewed coffee — this translates into a smooth-tasting coffee with hints of chocolate and caramel. Mixed with milk and ice, it's like drinking a (highly caffeinated) milkshake. I made my friend Martin taste it — instead of saying "yum" or offering some other profound culinary insight, he looked covetously at the Toddy system and asked "how much did that cost?" (about $30). You can certainly make cold-brewed coffee with readily accessible items, but I find the Toddy system convenient and the carafe for storing coffee syrup both attractive and useful.

I drank cold-brewed iced coffee several times a day for the last week or so, and I even took a couple of quarts to a 4th of July party. Although most of the acid is removed, little of the caffeine is — which makes for very lively parties.

Vietnamese-Style Iced Coffee
Combine equal parts cold-brewed New Orleans-style coffee syrup (coffee with chicory) with sweetened condensed milk. Stir well, and serve over ice. For an after-dinner coffee drink, add a shot of vodka.

]]>
Mon, 02 Mar 2015 09:10:17 UT
http://coffeejuice.com//blog-entry/138/Dining-Wine-%7C-Iced-Coffee-No-Sweat.html http://coffeejuice.com//blog-entry/138/Dining-Wine-%7C-Iced-Coffee-No-Sweat.html <![CDATA[Dining & Wine | Iced Coffee? No Sweat]]> BEFORE I go telling everybody that the secret to great iced coffee is already in the kitchen, my friend Keller wants me to confess: I didn't know from iced coffee until he showed me the light.

It's important to cop to this now, because not a summer goes by that he does not painstakingly remind me, a rabid iced-coffee drinker, that he's the one who introduced me to the wonders of cold-brewed iced coffee. The funny thing is, when the subject came up we were holed up in a summer rental with three friends off the coast of Puerto Rico, on a tiny island not exactly swimming in upmarket coffee houses.

Our first morning there I brewed a blend from the local grocery in the coffeepot, laced it with a little half-and-half and sugar, then let it cool. Classy, I thought, carrying the pitcher to the table. "I'll just take it hot," he mumbled, while I blinked in disbelief.

Clearly, this boy didn't know any better. A drink has a time and place. Surely he didn't subscribe to drinking hot coffee in summer?

"No, I only drink iced coffee if it's cold-brewed," he said.

For five days we watched him sullenly sip his hot coffee on a broiling Caribbean island in the dead of summer. We chided him for his pretensions, ridiculed him, tried valiantly to break him, but he patiently waited us out. Once we tried it we would understand, he explained. Like friends disputing a baseball stat in a bar with no access to Google, we had no way to settle the argument.

Two weeks later, back in Brooklyn, I saw a sign: "Cold Brewed Iced Coffee Served Here." Fine, then. I threw down two bucks and took a sip. Though it pains me to admit, the difference was considerable. Without the bitterness produced by hot water, the cold-brewed coffee had hints of chocolate, even caramel. I dropped my sugar packet — no need for it. The best brews hardly need cream. It really is the kind of thing a gentleman might spend five days in hot-coffee solitary confinement for.

Most days I'm too lazy to hunt down the elusive cold-brewed cup. But recently I discovered an interesting little fact. Cold brewed coffee is actually dirt simple to make at home. Online, you'll find a wealth of forums arguing for this bean or that, bottled water over tap, the 24-hour versus the 12-hour soak. You can even buy the Toddy cold-brew coffee system for about $30.

I was curious to see how it would taste without all the trappings. The answer is, Fantastic. My friend Carter, something of a cold-brewing savant, turned me onto another homegrown trick: freeze some of the concentrate into cubes. Matched with regular ice cubes, they melt into the same ratio as the final blend.

Very fancy. Can't wait to tell Keller.

]]>
Mon, 02 Mar 2015 09:09:49 UT
http://coffeejuice.com//blog-entry/137/Cool-Beans-Cold-Brew-is-the-Hottest-New-Thing-On-the-Iced-Coffee-Scene.html http://coffeejuice.com//blog-entry/137/Cool-Beans-Cold-Brew-is-the-Hottest-New-Thing-On-the-Iced-Coffee-Scene.html <![CDATA[Cool Beans - Cold Brew is the Hottest New Thing On the Iced Coffee Scene]]> If Seattle's Best Coffee's first New York City outlet is going to win us over this summer, it'll be by serving cold coffee.

That's because the 37-year-old coffee biz - No. 2 after Starbucks - relies on a special trick for extra-smooth iced coffee: They cold-brew it.

Candace Gibson, who manages the city's sole outlet, in the Penn Plaza Borders, takes 5 pounds of coarsely ground coffee beans, pours them in a giant filter in a big white plastic barrel, and lets them soak in 14 quarts of filtered water for 18 to 24 hours at room temperature.

Then, she lets the coffee slowly filter out the bottom through a spigot into a pitcher for pouring drinks. This brew, says Gibson, "is actually a concentrate": thick, slightly syrupy and very strong, meant to be cut in half with water before it's poured over ice.

The resulting drink ($1.70 for a small) is rich and flavorful with a creamy feel, minus any of that bitter bite you'd expect in cold coffee served up straight.

In fact, Jason Scherr, a cold-brewing advocate who owns Think Coffee in Greenwich Village and the Verb Cafe in Williamsburg, recommends his version without milk or sugar - "because we think our iced coffee is smooth enough."

Scherr, who's been cold-brewing for six years, thinks the method makes better-tasting iced coffee for two reasons.

First, he says, you're not "going back and forth between extreme temperatures," leading to a "bitter and over-extracted taste." And the long, slow, cold brewing process means he's "being as gentle with the bean as possible," resulting in that velvety feel.

There's science at work, too, claims Brett Holmes, a partner in Toddy, the Texas beverage company that makes the low-tech cold coffee brewers for coffee shops and regular Joes.

A smaller, home Toddy is $29.99 at Seattle's Best.

Cold water extracts 67% less acid from beans than hot, says Holmes, meaning less bitterness and less trouble for those with tender tummies. Still, while 9,500 coffee shops nationwide use Toddy as "their little secret," says Holmes, it's been mostly under the radar in New York until now.

Beyond Think, Verb and Seattle's Best, the only two Toddy shops he knows are Full City Coffee on the lower East Side and Ciao for Now in the East Village.

Scherr has a good idea of why it hasn't yet caught on commercially: The buckets take up space, each filter costs $1, and you use more coffee per cup than brewing it hot.

"But if you ever had it," he says, "you would definitely understand why we do it."

Of course, there are caveats, say coffee geeks, who've long posted reviews of cold-brewing on sites like www.coffeegeek.com. Like any food, coffee is a subjective thing, meaning some like it smoother and creamy - the Seattle's Best style - while others like bite sometimes associated with Starbucks.

But however you like it, iced coffee is definitely hot now.

]]>
Mon, 02 Mar 2015 09:09:23 UT
http://coffeejuice.com//blog-entry/136/The-Dish-%7C-Endangered-List-Iced-Storm.html http://coffeejuice.com//blog-entry/136/The-Dish-%7C-Endangered-List-Iced-Storm.html <![CDATA[The Dish | Endangered List Iced Storm]]> Unless you're familiar with coffee concentrate, New Orleans iced coffee is a puzzling ritual. The first time I had it, I watched skeptically as a friend's mother filled a plastic Mardi Gras cup with ice, poured in an inch of inky coffee from a mayonnaise jar, then topped it off with milk. It was as smooth as a milkshake but had a rich coffee flavor and packed a caffeinated punch. It was easily the best iced coffee I'd ever had, yet another thing that tastes better in New Orleans.

The secret was in the jar: coffee concentrate made by steeping coffee grounds in cold water. It may not be as famous as jambalaya — there are no rollicking songs about coffee concentrate — but it's part of the culinary culture of New Orleans: go to the Rue de la Course cafe and the paperback-and-sketchbook crowd is sipping iced coffee from concentrate; stand in line at a CC's Coffee House, Louisiana's alternative to Starbucks, and you can have a cool jolt on a day so humid that the sidewalks puddle even though it hasn't rained. You can get store-bought concentrate like CoolBrew, N. O. Brew and French Market not just at Langenstein's, the Uptown supermarket, but also at the local Whole Foods. And if you're from there, you could do what my friend did and bring home a jar of concentrate from her grandmother.

Or you can make it yourself. On one visit, I bought a Toddy, a cold-drip coffee maker that costs about $35 and is by far the homeliest gadget in my kitchen. It consists of a glass carafe that looks like a hardware-store iced-tea jug and a one-gallon white plastic tub fitted with a thick fabric filter and a rubber stopper (available at www.coldbrewed.com). You fill the tub with coarsely ground coffee, like French Market C&C City roast, a chicory blend, and add cold water; in the morning you pull the stopper and the carafe fills with coffee so dark that you can't shine a light through the glass.

It's a mystery how cold drip has remained a regional specialty, especially after you taste it against conventional iced coffee, which is brewed and then chilled. Heat brewing releases acids and oils, and as the coffee sits in the refrigerator, the bitterness intensifies. Cold-drip coffee, according to Brett Holmes, a partner at the family-owned Toddy company, has 67 percent less acid, and it's so smooth that it lets milk's natural sweetness come through, making sugar almost unnecessary.

Store-bought, Toddy-made or soaked and strained, concentrate is always in my refrigerator during iced-coffee season. And often, after making it for friends for the first time, I'll send them off with a jar of their own.

]]>
Mon, 02 Mar 2015 09:08:47 UT
http://coffeejuice.com//blog-entry/135/The-Dish-%7C-Endangered-List-Iced-Storm.html http://coffeejuice.com//blog-entry/135/The-Dish-%7C-Endangered-List-Iced-Storm.html <![CDATA[The Dish | Endangered List Iced Storm]]> Unless you're familiar with coffee concentrate, New Orleans iced coffee is a puzzling ritual. The first time I had it, I watched skeptically as a friend's mother filled a plastic Mardi Gras cup with ice, poured in an inch of inky coffee from a mayonnaise jar, then topped it off with milk. It was as smooth as a milkshake but had a rich coffee flavor and packed a caffeinated punch. It was easily the best iced coffee I'd ever had, yet another thing that tastes better in New Orleans.

The secret was in the jar: coffee concentrate made by steeping coffee grounds in cold water. It may not be as famous as jambalaya — there are no rollicking songs about coffee concentrate — but it's part of the culinary culture of New Orleans: go to the Rue de la Course cafe and the paperback-and-sketchbook crowd is sipping iced coffee from concentrate; stand in line at a CC's Coffee House, Louisiana's alternative to Starbucks, and you can have a cool jolt on a day so humid that the sidewalks puddle even though it hasn't rained. You can get store-bought concentrate like CoolBrew, N. O. Brew and French Market not just at Langenstein's, the Uptown supermarket, but also at the local Whole Foods. And if you're from there, you could do what my friend did and bring home a jar of concentrate from her grandmother.

Or you can make it yourself. On one visit, I bought a Toddy, a cold-drip coffee maker that costs about $35 and is by far the homeliest gadget in my kitchen. It consists of a glass carafe that looks like a hardware-store iced-tea jug and a one-gallon white plastic tub fitted with a thick fabric filter and a rubber stopper (available at www.coldbrewed.com). You fill the tub with coarsely ground coffee, like French Market C&C City roast, a chicory blend, and add cold water; in the morning you pull the stopper and the carafe fills with coffee so dark that you can't shine a light through the glass.

It's a mystery how cold drip has remained a regional specialty, especially after you taste it against conventional iced coffee, which is brewed and then chilled. Heat brewing releases acids and oils, and as the coffee sits in the refrigerator, the bitterness intensifies. Cold-drip coffee, according to Brett Holmes, a partner at the family-owned Toddy company, has 67 percent less acid, and it's so smooth that it lets milk's natural sweetness come through, making sugar almost unnecessary.

Store-bought, Toddy-made or soaked and strained, concentrate is always in my refrigerator during iced-coffee season. And often, after making it for friends for the first time, I'll send them off with a jar of their own.

]]>
Mon, 02 Mar 2015 09:08:46 UT
http://coffeejuice.com//blog-entry/134/The-Today-Show-Weekend-Edition.html http://coffeejuice.com//blog-entry/134/The-Today-Show-Weekend-Edition.html <![CDATA[The Today Show - Weekend Edition]]> The Toddy Cold Brew System was one of four winning coffeemakers - The Toddy, Cuisinart Grind & Brew, Bodum Santos Electric Vacuum, and the Melitta One - tested and selected by Cook's Illustrated for brewing 'the perfect pot of java' at home. Chris Kimball, Founder and Editor of Cook's Illustrated and contributing food editor to NBC's Today Show, appeared on The Today Show - Weekend Edition to share CI's results, and recommend The Toddy coffee maker for making a milder cup of java with less acidity - for both hot and iced coffee.

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Mon, 02 Mar 2015 09:08:13 UT