Cold Coffee Press... Oxymoronic or Brilliant?

Submitted by Kirk on Tue, 02/23/2010 - 15:35

I recently (6-7 months ago) moved down here from the Promised Land (Minnesota), and was excited for winters without a lot of snow... ha ha ha, joke's on me. Anyway, a very popular local coffee shop chain up in the frigid frostbite land of da Nort'is called Dunn Brothers, ya know. Unlike many coffee shops, Dunn Brother's prides themselves in roasting their own beans in each of their stores to give their customers the freshest experience possible." I will let you argue about whether or not that is a wise thing for a coffee company to do, however, my point in writing is to question you all about the "Cold Coffee Press" which Dunn Brothers also brags about.

http://www.dunnbros.com/beverages.asp?category=cold

I have had the concept explained to me and still do not entirely grasp the idea of a coffee press which is done while everything is COLD. Silly me, I thought the ingenuity of HOT coffee was the fact that it needs to reach a certain temperature (same as tea and other hot beverages) in order to excite the molecules to "interact" with each other... read into that naive description as many technical details as you like... the point still stands, how can a COLD press accurately produce good tasting coffee? I am assuming this was not just introduced by those up in the negative zero degree tundra of MN to enjoy on hot summer days when they wished for it to be cooler? A quick google search reveals many amateur "home baristas" attempting to make cold coffee with drip designs and a random assortment of other coffee devices, but not a lot of info on an actual cold "press". Is this something you are all familiar with? If there is a specific "press" designed for "cold press" coffee (which I understood there to be at Dunn Brothers), would anyone have a picture of what one looks like and a description of exactly how it works?

You betcha I'd appreciate it, ya know?

Filtron

Submitted by jlannon4 on Sun, 03/13/2011 - 18:16.

If I understand "cold coffee press correctly", I'm assuming this is similar to the Toddy or Filtron method. I've been using a Filtron (http://www.filtron.com/) with a good deal of success. The process is incredibly simple: poor water over coarsely ground beans, filter through a felt pad after ~ 24 hours of "brewing".

According to Toddy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toddy_coffee), the absence of heat results in a 67% reduction in acidity.

One can pretty simply approximate the Toddy/Filtron method of brewing with any sort of container and a filter. It's about as simple as brewing gets. With the resurgence of simple, pour-over hot brewing, I expect to see cold brewing methods become more popular.

To my palate, cold brewed coffee is markedly smoother and less acidic than hot brewed coffee. With the acidity out of the way, a lot of the subtlety of the bean and the roast comes to the fore.

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Submitted by Kirk on Tue, 02/23/2010 - 15:39.

huh... looks like Dunn Brothers has actually expanded quite a ways out of MN, there's always one in Nashville if you really want to check it out :) http://www.dunnbros.com/locations_all.asp

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Cold Coffee Press... Oxymoronic or Brilliant?

Filtron

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