Cold-Water Coffee Brewing
While I admit I’m not a big fan of coffee, I do drink it fairly regularly. The caffeine can’t be beat, and I’m a big fan of espresso and cappucino drinks. I generally like my coffee concentrated. Therefore, there’s this little item called The Toddy that looks awesome. You grind up coffee beans, and stick some cold filtered/spring water in there with them, and let this thing “brew” for 12 hours. It doesn’t need any electricity, so you can easily do it overnight or while you’re at work. What you get is a coffee syrup that’s 67% less acidic than normal coffee. You can keep it for up to 2 weeks in the refridgerator. You just add it to some hot or cold water, with some sugar, and bam! good instant coffee. None of that Folgers crap.
Naturally, I want to know how the syrup tastes. Screw diluting it, can it be drinken like espresso? And does anyone know how the caffeine fares with this system?
Amazon.com reviews are great for this thing…
The Toddy at Amazon.com
7 Comments
Hmm… thanks for the info. I figured you could drink the syrup 
So once it’s sat in there overnight, do you just sort of squeeze the syrup out or something?
You mean, “can it be drunk” like espresso.
The best application of the Toddy (aka “Cold Press coffee”) is for making iced coffee drinks. Normally, you’d do that with fresh-brewed coffee or espresso, which is hot enough to melt the ice in the drink right off the bat. Instant dilution. With the cold stuff, you can make an iced drink that isn’t diluted at all, and has the added benefits of being such a smooth brew.
Toddy is great. The only drawback is the inflexibility for hot drinks. Unfortunately it doesn’t heat well at all in the microwave, but I have found heating it on the stove suffices and steaming with an espresso machine (I know, you were looking forward to getting the bulky thing off you counter) works okay too.
Toddy is not a “syrup” it is just as liquid as espresso shots and can be pleasurably consumed by itself. It’s low acidity and full-bodied flavor make it a good choice for just about any application. You must beware that its lowered pH make it especially susceptible to pathogen infestation, so don’t go beyond two weeks – it may not be safe!
Contrary to the first post, I like the Toddy set up with the glass carafe and plastic brew cup. The filters make sure you don’t get grind sludge in your drink and simplify the process (c’mon, its only 30 bucks!). Hope this helps!
No need to pay money for this method. All you need is a container for brewing, some coffee filters, a funnel, and a glass “carafe” (bottles work just fine).
Dump the ground coffee into the water, let steep 10-20 hrs with periodic stirring, then carefully filter it into the bottles using the funnel lined with coffee filters. Cone filters work best but even the flat-bottomed filters will work.
At least try it this way first to be sure you like cold-brewed coffee, before blowing 35 bucks on some con-man’s contraption. Sorry but $35 isn’t “just” $35 to me, it’s a night out at a fine restaurant, or a few movies, or a night at the bar (almost). I guess if you’re rich then just buy everything you can, but for most of us a little ingenuity can save money for the finer things in life.
does anyone have the ratio for this?
I used to work at a nice coffeeshop that offered iced coffee toddy. You don’t need that Toddy thing from Amazon. Grind up some coffee and put it in a couple filters or a few layers of cheesecloth and tie it up like a big-assed teabag then throw it a bucket of cold water overnight. Feel free to slosh it around occasionally. The result is great, definately less acid and substantially more caffeine content than hot coffee or espresso. You can quickly consume some scary amounts of caffeine w/ cold-brewed coffee. 16oz of this served cold goes down fast and can cause some scary erratic heartbeats.